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JAN 


1924 


^^eiGALSt^#^ 


BR  125  .G66  1921 
Goodell,  Charles  L.  1854- 

1937. 
Heralds  of  a  passion 


HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 
Rev.  CHARLES  L.  GOODELL,  d.d. 


HERALDS 
OF  A   PASSION 


BY 


v/ 


Rev.   CHARLES  L.   GOODELL,  d.d. 

SECRETARY,   COMMISSION   ON    EVANGELISM 

AND   LIFE   SERVICE   OF   THE 

FEDERAL    COUNCIL   OF  THE    CHURCHES 

OF  CHRIST  IN  AMERICA 


^M^nPF/j//^ 


NEW  ^Ha^  YORK 
GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT,   1 92 1. 
BY  GEORGE  H.   DORAN  COMPANY 


PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 


TO 

MY  TRUE    FRIEND 

JUDGE  AMOS  L.  BEATY 


FOREWORD 

I  think  it  fair  to  my  reader,  my  book  and  myself 
to  guard  at  the  outset  against  any  possible  mis- 
apprehension as  to  the  form  and  purpose  of  my 
message.  Lest  any  one  should  be  misled  by  the 
word  *' Passion"  in  my  title  and  its  recurrence 
through  many  chapters,  I  hasten  to  say  this  book 
is  no  plea  for  emotionalism  or  sentimentalism  of 
any  sort.  I  am  not  interested  in  turning  the  steam 
on  the  whistle;  my  concern  is  that  there  shall  be 
fire  under  the  boiler.  Nothing  in  this  book  can 
be  construed  as  an  appeal  to  fear,  or  self-love,  or 
a  spineless  mysticism,  or  against  criticism,  high 
or  low.  If  scholars  have  brought  virgin  gold  to 
view,  if  criticism  has  cut  an  old  truth  into  finer 
facets,  no  one  will  welcome  that  more  than  I. 
Each  additional  discovery  makes  the  whole  Chris- 
tian world  richer.  It  is  a  common  treasure  in 
which  men  of  all  shades  of  opinion  should  rejoice. 

You  may  be  wiser  than  I,  and  that  is  well,  not 
because  it  is  a  treasure  over  which  you  may  gloat, 
but  because  it  supplies  you  with  the  means  to  be 
of  greater  service  to  your  kind.  He  who  knows 
most  must,  therefore,  do  most,  "for  to  whom  much 
is  given  of  him  also  will  much  be  required. ' '  I  am 
following  after  you  as  fast  as  I  can.  **  What  I  know 
not,  teach  thou  me,"  said  the  good  St.  Augustine. 
Wesley  cries,  "Do  not  beat  me  down  in  order  to 
quicken  my  pace  for  then  I  can  not  follow  you 

▼ii  ^ 


viii  FOEEWOED 

at  all.  There  is  one  thing  greater  than  truth, 
and  that  is  love.  You  may  die  without  the 
knowledge  of  many  truths,  and  yet  be  carried  into 
Abraham's  bosom,  but  if  you  die  without  love, 
what  will  knowledge  avail?  Just  as  much  as  it 
avails  the  devil  and  his  angels." 

I  am  led  to  the  choice  of  the  stirring  theme 
which  I  present  because  it  seems  to  me  after  mde 
travel  throughout  the  country  and  intimate  asso- 
ciations with  men  in  the  churches  and  out  of  them, 
that  the  great  need  of  the  hour  is  a  holy  passion 
for  the  souls  of  men.  If  the  angel  of  the  churches 
was  to  bring  once  more  a  greeting  and  challenge  to 
the  Church  of  the  Living  God,  it  would  be  a  repe- 
tition of  the  message  to  the  Church  at  Laodicea. 
Once  it  was  said  that  'Hhe  coat-of-arms  of  the 
twentieth  century  is  an  interrogation  point  ram- 
pant above  three  bishops  dormant,  and  its  motto 
'Query'."  We  are  not  passed  far  into  the  twen- 
tieth century,  but  we  have  passed  beyond  that 
attitude  of  mind.  The  church  and  the  country  are 
in  the  throes  of  no  great  theological  question — 
the  names  of  Darwin,  of  Spencer  and  of  Huxley  no 
longer  marshal  the  scientists  and  theologians  to 
battle.  The  effect  of  the  great  war  has  discounted 
the  position  which  was  taken  by  many  German 
critics.  Even  higher  criticism  itself  has  spent 
much  of  its  forces;  some  of  its  contentions  have 
been  established  and  others  have  been  proven  to  be 
of  too  little  value  longer  to  disturb  and  irritate  the 
Church.  The  great  fundamentals  of  the  Chris- 
tian life  were  never  more  generally  accepted  inside 
the  Church  than  they  are  today,  but  the  sad  thing 
about  it  all  is  that  the  world  does  not  seem  to  be 
enough  interested  in  Christian  things  even  to  dis- 
cuss them.    Not  long  ago  the  question  was  pro- 


FOREWORD  ix 

pounded  in  literary  circles, ' '  Do  you  find  religious 
unrest  among  your  friends  and  what  is  the  cause 
of  it?"  The  answer  returned  was,  '*We  know 
nothing  about  religious  unrest ;  we  are  not  dis-  ■ 
turbed  at  all,  we  sleep.  We  do  not  go  to  church 
Sunday  morning  because  we  are  in  bed.  We  do 
not  take  up  religious  questions  because  we  are  not 
interested  in  them."  So  it  appears  that  the 
weapon  which  is  being  used  against  the  Church  and 
religion  today  is  not  the  sword  or  the  stiletto,  but 
the  sand  bag.  The  neglect  of  these  things  which 
we  once  held  dear  is  due  not  to  conviction  but  to 
indifference.  We  do  not  make  this  as  a  sweeping 
charge.  There  are  happy  exceptions  throughout 
the  country.  On  the  whole,  no  year  has  marked 
as  large  gains  in  the  Christian  Church  as  the 
present  year,  but  it  still  remains  true  that  com- 
pared with  what  might  be  accomplished  there  is 
such  a  dearth  of  zeal  and  such  benumbing  of 
thought  and  activity  as  to  sadden  the  heart  of 
every  lover  of  righteousness. 

This  attitude  of  stolidity  and  indifference  was 
the  one  thing  which  Jesus  could  not  stand.  Next 
to  actual  hypocrisy.  He  fulminated  against  it  with 
all  the  power  of  a  flaming  soul.  He  wanted  men 
to  think  things  through  and  to  do  as  they  ought 
to  do.  He  could  not  brook  indifference  in  any- 
thing. The  message  to  the  Church  at  Laodicea 
was:  **Ye  are  neither  cold  nor  hot.  I  would  you 
were  either  one  thing  or  the  other.  I  would  rather 
you  would  stand  out  openly  against  me  than  to  be 
cold  and  indifferent.  You  have  plenty  of  money 
and  think  you  need  nothing.  You  do  not  under- 
stand. You  are  wretched  and  miserable  and  poor 
and  blind  and  naked."    What  a  challenge  that 


X  FOREWORD 

was  to  the  first  orthodox  church  in  town,  with  a 
tall  steeple  and  a  fine  choir,  a  big  congregation 
and  a  great  preacher! 

I  wish  to  bring  this  simple  message  of  my 
Master.  When  He  ordained  Peter,  He  asked  him 
no  question  in  creed  or  church  reform.  There  was 
only  one  question,  so  often  repeated  that  it  burned 
itself  into  Peter's  soul,  "Lovest  thou  me?" 
Among  the  dilettanti,  it  is  supposed  to  be  bad 
form  to  be  interested  in  anything.  The  spirit  of 
wonder  has  died  out.  Nothing  any  more  is  grand, 
dominant  and  imperative.  The  glory  of  Words- 
worth's early  morning  has  faded  into  the  light  of 
common  day.  In  some  way  we  must  get  back  our 
old  enthusiasm;  in  some  way  we  must  find  once 
more  that  passion  which  changed  the  face  of  the 
ages  and  sent  the  Church  with  a  pentecostal  flame 
to  carry  the  good  tidings  everywhere.  It  is  to 
that  purpose  that  these  pages  address  themselves. 

C.  L.  G. 


CONTENTS 

PAOK 

Foreword vii 

CHAPTER 

I    The  Passion  of  Jesus 15 

II    The  Table-Talk  of  Jesus 37 

III  Heralds  of  a  Passion 55 

IV  Holy  Boldness 65 

V    Culture — A  Load  or  a  Lift 75 

VI    The  Passion  of  the  Prophets  ....  85 

VII    The  Passion  of  the  Great  Evangelists  .  91 

VIII    The  Teacher's  Passion 101 

IX    The  Passion  op  the  Church  .     .     .     .  109 

X    The  Passion  for  Service 123 

XI    How  to  Nourish  the  Sacred  Fire  .     .     .  135 


Chapter  I 
THE  PASSION  OF  JESUS 


HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

CHAPTER  I 

THE  PASSION   OF  JESUS 

That  word  "passion'*  has  gotten  into  bad  com- 
pany if,  as  Dr.  Crothers  says,  *'a  noun  is  known 
by  the  company  it  keeps."  The  word  itself  is  a 
pure  word.  It  simply  means  love  on  fire.  A  mas- 
ter of  English  literature  has  said  all  high  poetry 
has  its  source  in  passion.  Of  course  that  passion 
may  take  form  in  love,  or  jealousy,  or  hate,  or  any 
other  strong  passion  that  transports  the  mind  out 
of  and  above  itself.  It  was  left  for  Christianity 
to  give  to  that  word  its  highest  meaning.  The  pas- 
sions of  the  human  heart  were  crowded  into  the 
yearning  of  a  life  and  the  agony  of  the  cross.  The 
symbol  of  our  faith  is  a  cross.  On  that  cross  our 
Master  died,  and  our  chief  business  is  to  declare 
a  love  that  even  the  cross  could  not  halt.  Everyi- 
thing  great  in  life  is  a  passion,  and  religion,  if 
alive,  must  be  impassioned,  must  be  threaded 
through  and  through  with  a  network  of  exquisite 
nerves.    I  am  the  more  anxious  to  impress  this, 

15 


16  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

because  we  are  living  in  an  age  that  aims  to  rob 
religion  of  its  *' inflammatory  touch."  There  are 
those  who  look  upon  all  signs  of  emotion  and  devo- 
tion with  distress.  They  seek  to  set  forth  their 
faith  in  mental  crystals,  they  keep  a  cold  bath  for 
every  fervor,  and  when  their  epitaph  is  written, 
sad-eyed  angels  will  carve  in  the  marble,  ''They 
died  of  too  much  self-control."  "Light  enough, 
but  no  heat,"  was  the  way  someone  described  an- 
cient philosophy.  That  is  a  good  description  of 
much  of  the  theorizing  of  today.  It  is  heat  the 
world  needs  quite  as  much  as  light.  The  path  to 
sound  thinking  is  not  always  through  a  big  brain, 
sometimes  it  is  through  a  warm  heart. 

"The  heart  is  wiser  than  the  intellect 
And  works  with  surer  hands  and  swifter  feet 
Toward  wise  conclusions." 

A  big  brain  and  a  big  heart  ought  to  go  to- 
gether.   Neither  is  complete  without  the  other. 

It  is  a  life  on  fire  that  kindles  another.  The 
fiercest  enemy  to  be  fought  in  our  day  is  sheer 
apathy.  We  have  been  talking  about  religious 
imrest.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  there  is  too  little 
lof  it — ^the  people  are  asleep.  What  breaks  the 
heart  of  the  enthusiast  is  to  fire  red  hot  shells 
into  a  mud  bank. 

Have  you  ever  meditated  on  the  passion  of 
our  Lord?  Is  there  a  more  pathetic  story  in  liter- 
ature than  the  rejection  of  Jesus?  He  came 
unto  His  own  and  His  own  received  Him  not. 


THE  PASSION  OF  JESUS  17 

He  was  poor  and  lowly.  He  was  cast  out  as  evil. 
He  died  upon  the  cross — died  deserted,  and  men 
called  Him  mad.  He  was  bom  among  the  cattle 
and  He  died  among  thieves.  "We  marvel  how  the 
Jews  could  turn  away  from  Him,  but  if  the  Lord 
of  Glory  came  among  us  today,  would  we  give 
Him  any  kindlier  reception?  He  was  eager;  we 
are  cold.  He  was  enthusiastic ;  we  are  indifferent. 
He  wept  over  Jerusalem;  we  seldom  weep  even 
for  ourselves.  The  Church's  thermometer  has 
dropped ;  her  step  in  many  quarters  is  leaden  and 
her  spirit  dull.  "We  have  lost  the  fine  fervor  of 
our  early  rapture.  There  are  too  few  with  blaz- 
ing eye  and  burning  heart.  Some  way  we  must 
win  back  that  early  enthusiasm.  Do  we  not  need 
the  coming  of  that  spirit  that  shall  convict  of 
sin  and  righteousness  and  judgment,  so  that  our 
hearts  shall  bum  and  our  tongues  kindle?  Time 
was  when  sin  was  an  ugly  thing;  people  were  pos- 
itive about  moral  things.  There  were  two  colors — 
things  were  very  black  or  very  white.  There  was 
a  sharp  line  drawn  between  him  who  served  God 
and  him  who  served  Him  not.  In  our  disposi- 
tion to  be  tolerant,  have  we  not  lost  the  real  sense 
of  values?  Our  black  and  white  seems  to  have 
faded  into  a  general  gray.  The  bad  are  not  so 
bad  as  they  might  be;  the  good  are  not  so  good 
as  they  think  they  are.  As  George  Eliot  says, 
''Like  an  omnibus,  we  take  on  board  anybody 
and  anything  which  beckons  as  we  pass.    "We  en- 


18  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

tertain  Grod  and  the  Devil  on  the  same  floor  and 
on  equal  terms." 

How  often  we  read  in  the  Scriptures  that 
Jesus  was  moved  with  compassion.  "When  He 
saw  the  multitude,  He  was  moved."  Not  simply 
touched,  but  swept  as  by  a  storm.  He  wept  over 
Jerusalem,  because  He  saw  the  people  sinning, 
saw  them  missing  the  mark,  saw  the  harvest  of 
it  all.  Of  course  it  would  be  trite  and  I  shall  be 
enrolled  among  those  who  ask  silly  and  imper- 
tinent questions,  but  may  I  venture  to  ask  if  any 
of  us  ever  really  wept  over  Boston,  or  New  York, 
or  Chicago,  or  St.  Louis,  or  any  lesser  city,  or 
town  where  God  gave  us  our  place  for  service? 
It  was  a  beautiful  Jerusalem  that  Jesus  looked 
upon;  the  temple  like  a  mountain  of  snow,  forty 
and  six  years  in  building;  palaces  for  Herod  and 
Caiaphas,  a  grand  theater,  and  a  great  hippo- 
drome ;  three  historic  towers  on  the  north  and  east, 
and  an  acropolis, — a  sight  to  stir  the  souls  of 
men,  and  an  unspeakable  anguish  to  contemplate 
its  catastrophe.  Some  of  you  have  climbed  the 
Mount  of  Olives  and  marked  what  yet  remains 
of  the  walls  the  Saracen  builded  and  the  ruins 
of  other  days.  Have  you  also  climbed  the  hills 
around  Boston  or  Pittsburgh?  Have  you  gone 
to  the  Metropolitan  or  Woolworth  tower  and 
looked  upon  the  riches  of  our  great  city,  the 
clustered  spires  of  cathedral  and  university  where 
millions  of  people  come  and  go,  and  have  you 


THE  PASSION  OF  JESUS  19 

wept  over  those  who  go  down  those  streets  to 
shame  and  death — the  flotsam  and  jetsam  of  a 
great  city?  Or  have  you  cried  as  Bliicher  cried 
from  the  dome  of  St.  Paul's,  in  London,  **What 
a  city  for  pillage!"  And  have  you  gone  down 
to  join  the  crowd  in  its  quest  after  pelf  to  wrest 
something  for  yourself  out  of  the  general  forage 
and  plunder?  I  hardly  dare  venture  to  ask  it,  but 
if  you  were  to  open  your  desk  and  take  out  your 
diary,  would  there  be  in  it  any  record  of  nights 
of  anguish  and  of  prayer  for  lost  men  such  as 
they  put  down  who  wrote  in  the  Gospels,  the  diary 
of  the  Son  of  God?  "At  the  foot  of  the  cross," 
says  Sir  Oliver  Lodge,  ''there  has  been  a  peren- 
nial experience  of  relief  and  renovation.  Ours  is 
not  a  creed,  it  is  a  passion.  Men  in  every  age 
have  died  for  it.  In  every  land  where  its  tale  is 
told  and  with  every  new  sun  that  dawns, 
drunkards  may  be  found  whom  it  has  made  sober, 
thieves  whom  it  has  taught  to  be  honest,  harlots 
whom  it  has  lifted  up  to  chastity,  selfish  men 
who,  touched  by  its  preaching,  live  by  a  great 
law  of  self-sacrifice.  It  is  the  root  whence  blos- 
som great  heroisms  and  charities.  All  human 
sorrows  hide  in  His  wounds.  All  human  self- 
denials  lean  on  His  cross." 

Well  says  Heine,  "How  great  a  drama  is  the 
passion  of  Christ.  How  glorious  a  figure  is  that 
of  the  Man-God.  His  words  are  a  balm  for  all 
the  wounds  this  world  can  inflict,  and  the  blood 


20  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

that  was  shed  at  Golgotha  has  become  a  healing 
stream  for  all  that  suffer.  The  white  marble  gods 
of  the  Greeks  were  spattered  with  His  blood  and 
they  sickened  with  terror  and  can  never  more 
regain  their  health.'* 

The  simple  record  of  three  short  years  of 
Christ's  life  has  done  more  to  regenerate  and 
soften  mankind  than  all  the  disquisitions  of  phi- 
losophers and  all  the  exhortations  of  moralists. 

If  proof  is  wanted  of  the  vital  forces  that  dwell 
in  Christ,  we  find  it  in  the  impression  He  made 
upon  the  men  about  Him.  They  were  only  fish- 
ermen, sitters  at  the  seat  of  custom — bits  of  com- 
mon clay,  but  they  caught  the  spirit  and  took 
their  impulse  from  Christ.  His  spirit  so  wrought 
in  them  that  when  He  himself  had  left  the  earth, 
they  became  heralds  not  of  a  creed  but  of  a  pas- 
sion. 

Jesus  opened  the  gates  into  a  new  universe. 
He  taught  us  that  the  cross  on  which  the  sinless 
one  died  for  the  sinful  is  the  supreme  interpreta- 
tion of  God.  He  turned  His  face  to  the  world  in 
the  midst  of  His  own  suffering  and  cried,  "He 
that  hath  seen  me  hath  seen  the  Father."  In  His 
own  person  He  brought  a  spiritual  power  and 
dynamic  which  broke  up  the  old  order  of  the 
pagan  world  and  founded  a  system  based  upon 
an  uncalculating  and  overwhelming  love.  He 
mastered  men  and  events  and  broke  into  the 
leaden  night  with  a  blazing  passion  that  was  vol- 


THE  PASSION  OF  JESUS  21 

canic  and  irresistible.  He  broke  up  the  order  of 
His  time  to  the  breaking  of  His  own  heart.  Well 
says  Forsythe,  * '  He  was  an  austere  man,  a  severe 
critic,  a  bom  fighter,  of  choleric  wrath  and  fiery 
scorn,  so  that  the  people  thought  he  was  Elijah 
or  the  Baptist.  Yet  He  was  gentle  to  the  last 
degree,  especially  to  those  ignorant  and  out  of 
the  way.  Clear,  calm,  determined  and  sure  of 
His  mark.  He  was  the  next  hour  roused  to  such 
impulsive  passion  as  if  He  were  beside  himself. 
But  if  He  let  himself  go,  He  always  knew  where 
He  was  going.  He  poured  out  His  soul  unto  God 
and  unto  death  and  He  was  the  friend  of  publicans 
and  sinners." 

At  the  cleansing  of  the  temple.  He  was  so  hot 
with  imperious  haste  and  mighty  indignation  that 
from  that  moment  His  enemies  said,  '^You  to  the 
death,"  and  they  never  let  up  in  their  persecution 
until  they  had  Him  nailed  to  the  Cross.  When 
His  disciples  saw  His  fiery  indignation,  we  can 
imagine  one  as  saying  to  the  other,  "Of  what 
does  this  remind  you  I"  and  the  other  answers, 
"It  reminds  me  of  the  Psahn  in  which  it  is  writ- 
ten, 'The  zeal  of  thy  house  hath  eaten  me  up.'  " 
The  visual  image  of  zeal  as  Coleridge  calls  it,  is  a 
boiling  pot.  The  root  of  the  word  is  in  the  Greek 
zeo — to  boil.  Could  there  be  a  more  vivid  word  to 
describe  the  boiling  over  with  heat  of  the  pas- 
sions and  emotions  of  the  Son  of  God?  Is  it  any 
wonder  that  it  is  written,  "As  many  as  I  love,  I 


22  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

rebuke  and  chasten ;  be  zealous  therefore  and  re- 
pent/' The  one  thing  that  Jesus  could  not  endure 
was  ease  in  Zion.  The  words  to  the  church  at 
Laodicea  fairly  blistering  us,  ^*I  know  thy  works, 
that  thou  art  neither  cold  nor  hot.  I  would  thou 
wert  cold  or  hot.  So  then  because  thou  art  luke- 
warm and  neither  cold  nor  hot,  I  will  spue  thee 
out  of  my  mouth.'' 

What  a  phrase  that  is — *'to  be  eaten  up  with 
zeal.'*  All  fear  of  what  the  people  or  the  leaders 
might  do  unto  Him  is  forgotten.  All  sense  of  re- 
serve and  lamb-like  meekness  devoured.  For  the 
first  time  we  appreciate  *'the  wrath  of  the  Lamb" 
as  we  see  what  He  did  in  His  Father's  house  that 
day.  With  far-reaching  emphasis  Alexander 
White  says,  *'His  holy  zeal  sustained  Him  and 
impelled  Him  all  through  His  life,  and  the  same 
ruling  passion  was  His  greatest  strength  in  His 
death."  His  disciples  must  have  recalled  it  and 
said  to  one  another  even  while  they  forsook  him 
and  fled,  *'The  zeal  of  His  Father's  house  hath 
eaten  Him  up."  They  must  have  said  it  to  them- 
selves as  they  stood  afar  off  and  saw  His  cruci- 
fixion consummated. 

Now  the  Saviour  said  Himself  that  it  was 
enough  for  the  disciple  to  be  as  his  Lord.  We 
bear  His  name;  we  represent  His  life  to  the 
world;  we  are  to  personify  His  teachings.  How 
can  we  do  that  if  we  ourselves  are  not  ablaze  with 
holy  passion?    It  was  a  flame   which   was  the 


THE  PASSION  OP  JESUS  23 

symbol  of  Pentecost.  Those  disciples,  dis- 
couraged and  ashamed,  were  to  have  every  barrier 
melted  away  and  to  go  forward  with  a  blazing 
passion  that  nothing  could  stop,  until,  as  tradition 
has  it,  Paul's  zeal  consumed  his  body  and  his 
head  rolled  from  the  block.  The  rest  of 
the  disciples  had  cruel  mockings  and  scourgings 
and  imprisonments,  their  devotion  so  consuming 
them  that  they  had  no  heart  left  for  anything  save 
Jesus  Christ  and  Him  crucified.  It  was  not  a  new 
thing  for  an  absorbing  passion  to  consume  the 
lives  of  men.  Love  of  power  had  just  eaten  up 
Julius  Caesar ;  love  of  praise  had  eaten  up  TuUius 
Cicero ;  love  of  liberty  had  eaten  up  Marcus  Cato ; 
love  of  pleasure  had  consumed  Mark  Antony. 
Was  it  any  wonder  that  Paul,  consumed  by 
a  greater  passion  than  any  of  these,  should  say, 
**I  live,  yet  not  I,  but  Christ  liveth  in  me.  For 
me  to  live  is  Christ,  and  to  die  is  gain."  Put 
this  over  against  any  purely  intellectual  concep- 
tion of  Christianity,  and  how  frigid  all  that 
appears.  The  one  thing  necessary  for  every  soul 
is  to  catch  his  Master's  passion.  Small  wonder 
that  Whitefield's  cenotaph  has  carved  upon  it  a 
flaming  heart,  and  that  the  grave  of  Adam  Clark 
bears  similar  testimony  to  a  passion  which  con- 
sumed a  life  in  a  blaze  of  flaming  devotion. 

The  proposition  which  I  wish  to  lay  down  as 
the  prerequisite  to  all  evangelistic  endeavor  is 
that  no  man  can  be  the  herald  of  his  Lord's  pas- 


24  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

sion  if  he  does  not  himself  share  it.  No  man  can 
win  for  God  unless  he  is  willing  to  pay  the  price 
in  blood  and  tears.  I  make  my  plea  to  the  church 
and  the  ministry  for  a  consuming  zeal.  "No 
heart  will  long  he  pure  that  is  not  passionate, 
no  virtue  safe  that  is  not  enthusiastic."  Our 
splendid  cathedrals  are  built  according  to  the  most 
approved  plans  of  the  architects,  and  our  altars 
are  set  up  in  noble  and  stately  art.  I  am  ready 
to  grant  the  virtue  of  apostolic  succession  to  all 
who  minister  there,  but  the  question  which  I  ask 
with  deep  heart  yearning  is  this  one,  Have  the 
fires  been  kindled  and  are  they  blazing  on  the 
altar,  or  have  they  gone  out  and  are  men  now 
shivering  in  doubt  where  once  God's  prophets  led 
out  His  hosts  in  power?  In  many  places  the 
priests  of  Jehovah  seem  to  be  as  impotent  as  the 
priests  of  Baal  to  call  down  the  heavenly  fires. 
They  have  poured  the  waters  of  doubt  over  the 
stones  and  the  sacrifice  and  they  stand  forsaken 
where  once  there  were  cleft  skies,  and  falling 
fires  to  consume  sacrifice  and  altar  and  later  lick 
up  the  last  drop  of  the  waters  of  doubt  and  dem- 
onstrate to  all  Israel  that  God  and  Baal  do  not 
keep  company  on  the  same  Olympus.  From  cry- 
ing ' '  Thus  saith  the  Lord, ' '  and  saying  with  holy 
assurance  "I  know  whom  I  have  believed,"  they 
are  shaking  limp  hands  over  a  credo  of  faith 
and  immortality  which  has  lost  its  power,  and  are 
looking  behind  them  with  the  hope  that  they  may 


THE  PASSION  OF  JESUS  25 

be  buttressed  by  scientific  investigation  rather 
than  the  glad  assurance  of  a  triumphant  faith. 

We  preach  many  sermons  about  the  rejection  of 
Christ,  and  we  blame  the  men  of  His  century,  but 
what  is  the  condition  with  us?  We  bow  before 
the  conventional  and  are  smug  and  comfortable. 
If  we  had  Jesus  with  us  today,  would  we  not  find 
Him  a  great  inconvenience,  and  maybe  send  Him 
either  to  jail  or  to  an  asylum  as  a  disturber  of  the 
peace?  Such  zeal  as  His  was  in  the  highest  degree 
uncomfortable  for  the  dilettanti  of  His  time. 
Even  those  who  represented  the  Church  would 
not  abide  it,  but  the  record  of  history  is  that  in 
all  its  great  ages  humanity  has  bridged  the  gulf 
which  threatened  it  by  "walking  over  the  body 
of  some  fanatic  who  made  himself  a  highway  for 
his  race."  Jesus  was  a  man  of  intense  feeling 
and  He  never  held  in  His  emotions.  When  He 
saw  men  robbing  their  poor  neighbors  at  the  seat 
of  the  money-changers,  He  overthrew  their  tables, 
and  lashed  with  His  tongue  those  who  had  prosti- 
tuted their  opportunities  and  imposed  upon  their 
neighbors.  When  He  saw  the  city  given  over  to 
indifference  and  men  walking  holy  places  with 
stolid  heart,  He  wept. 

We  have  a  great  deal  to  say  in  our  conventions 
and  stately  assemblies  about  emotionalism.  We 
are  greatly  fearful  lest  religion  shall  seem  to 
be  a  matter  of  life  instead  of  a  matter  of  creed. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  there  is  no  fear  whatever  in 


26  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

our  time  that  there  will  be  too  much  emotion 
connected  with  religion.  Even  the  great  evan- 
gelistic meetings  are  not  open  to  that  charge.  I 
have  been  in  closest  touch  with  them  for  the  last 
generation,  and  I  am  bound  to  say  that  I  have 
nowhere  seen  anything  which  approached  emotion- 
alism. I  have  seen  tens  of  thousands  of  men 
coming  up  to  shake  hands  with  evangelists,  but 
not  one  in  a  hundred  had  even  a  tear  in  his  eye. 
The  impelling  motive  in  most  cases  was  purely 
social  or  ethical,  with  no  sense  of  such  conviction 
of  sin  as  would  blanch  the  cheek  and  make  men's 
knees  knock  together.  He  is  a  poor  student  of 
psychology  who  does  not  know  that  the  emotions 
must  lie  at  the  base  of  all  great  thinking  or  doing. 
Herbert  Spencer  said,  **In  the  genesis  of  a  sys- 
tem of  thought  the  emotional  nature  is  a  large 
factor,  perhaps  as  large  a  factor  as  the  intellec- 
tual. "  It  is  a  sad  tribute  which  Charles  Darwin 
brings.  After  an  experience  which  had  dwarfed 
his  emotional  life,  he  says  *'At  the  age  of  thirty 
poetry  of  many  kinds  gave  me  great  pleasure 
and  music  was  a  great  delight.  But  now  for  many 
years  I  cannot  endure  to  read  a  line  of  poetry  and 
I  find  Shakespeare  so  intolerably  dull  that  it 
nauseates  me.  I  have  lost  my  taste  for  pictures 
and  music.  The  loss  of  these  tastes  is  a  loss  of 
happiness,  and  may  possibly  be  injurious  to  the 
intellect  and  more  probably  to  the  moral  character 
by  enfeebUng  the  emotional  part  of  our  nature.** 


THE  PASSION  OF  JESUS  27 

In  his  essays  on  "  Criticism '^  Matthew  Arnold 
says,  ''The  permanent  virtue  of  religion  is  that  it 
has  lighted  up  morality,  that  it  has  applied  the 
emotion  and  inspiration  needful  for  carrying  the 
sage  along  the  way  perfectly,  for  carrying  the 
ordinary  man  along  it  at  all.'-*  Dr.  Sheridan 
quotes  John  Stuart  Blackie:  ''The  early  church 
worked  by  a  fervid  moral  contagion,  not  by  the 
suasion  of  cool  argument.  The  Christian  method 
of  conversion,  not  by  logical  arguments  but  by 
moral  contagion  and  the  effusion  of  the  Holy 
Ghost  has  with  the  masses  of  mankind  always 
proved  itself  the  most  effective." 

Dr.  John  Watson  will  not  be  accused  of  lack 
of  clearness  in  thought;  he  says:  "Every  great 
movement  which  has  stirred  the  depth  of  life  and 
changed  the  face  of  history  has  sprung  from  some 
profound  sentiment  and  powerful  emotion."  Dr. 
Alexander  Maclaren,  one  of  the  clearest  thinkers 
of  his  time,  is  moved  to  say,  "There  is  a  kind 
of  religious  teachers  who  are  always  preaching 
down  enthusiasm  and  preaching  up  what  they  call 
'sober  standards  of  feeling'  in  matters  of  re- 
ligion. By  which,  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten,  they 
mean  precisely  such  a  tepid  condition  as  is  de- 
scribed in  much  less  polite  language  when  the 
Voice  from  Heaven  says,  'Because  thou  art 
neither  cold  nor  hot,  I  will  spue  thee  out  of  my 
mouth. '  I  should  have  thought  that  the  last  piece 
of  furniture  which  any  Christian  Church  in  the 


28  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

nineteenth  century  needed  was  a  refrigerator.  A 
poker  and  a  pair  of  bellows  would  be  much  more 
needful  to  them.  Not  to  be  all  aflame  is  madness, 
if  we  believe  our  own  creed." 

**He  shall  baptize  you  with  fire,"  and  if  it  does 
anything  it  will  kindle  emotion.  The  great  glory 
of  the  Gospel  is  to  cleanse  men's  hearts  by  raising 
their  temperature,  making  them  pure  because  they 
are  made  warm,  and  that  separates  them  from 
their  evils. 

"William  James  ought  to  understand  the 
psychology  of  religious  life,  and  he  says,  in  his 
"Varieties  of  Eeligious  Experience":  "I  believe 
that  feeling  is  the  deeper  source  of  religion,  and 
that  philosophic  and  theological  formulas  are 
secondary  products  like  the  translations  of  a  text 
into  another  tongue. ' '  Dr.  Jowett  voices  a  great 
truth  when  he  says :  ' '  If  the  church  would  be  pure, 
the  church  must  be  passionate.  Elevation  of 
character  depends  upon  warmth  of  affection.  A 
fiery  heart  by  the  energy  of  its  own  heat  creates 
a  self -preserving  atmosphere  against  the  devil." 

Among  those  liberal  denominations  which  have 
been  quite  inclined  to  accept  the  dictum  of  Presi- 
dent Ehot  that  the  religion  of  the  future  will  be 
intellectual  and  not  emotional,  that  religious 
emotion  is  the  result  of  defective  culture  and  will 
cease  when  education  and  evolution  have  done 
their  work,  there  is  a  mighty  swing  of  the  pen- 
dulum.    They  are  holding  evangelistic  services 


THE  PASSION  OF  JESUS  29 

night  after  night.  When  the  present  writer  was 
asked  to  give  an  address  on  evangelization  before 
one  of  the  important  gatherings  of  one  of  the 
liberal  churches,  he  asked  with  a  smile,  ''Do  you 
think  you  can  stand  my  message?"  The  reply 
was,  "We  must  have  more  vital  religion."  Of 
.all  the  addresses  which  I  have  given,  none  were 
received  with  greater  apparent  fervor  than  the 
one  delivered  under  such  circumstances. 

To  feel  the  thrill  of  a  great  love  and  to  be 
profoundly  interested  in  men  and  things  is  not 
bad  form,  it  is  Christ-like.  To  warm  up  to  a 
publican  and  to  warm  over  a  Pharisee  is  the  kind 
of  business  which  thrills  the  heart  of  God.  He 
said  there  was  one  thing  all  men  needed,  and  that 
was  conviction.  We  have  our  foibles,  our  weak- 
nesses, our  indifferences,  our  by-plays  and  our 
avocations.  The  crying  need  of  the  world  is  a 
few  first-class  convictions.  And  what  is  a  con- 
viction? Is  it  not  something  that  makes  a  convict 
of  you;  that  is,  something  that  fastens  a  man 
to  one  thing  so  that  he  is  not  at  liberty  to  roam 
everywhere  to  no  purpose?  Then  he  can  say, 
"This  one  thing  I  believe;  this  one  thing  I  do." 
A  Christian  without  conviction  is  powerless  and 
is  a  contradiction  of  terms.  A  Christian  that  pre- 
fers plans  of  salvation  to  salvation  itself,  that 
raises  definitions  of  the  nature  of  Jesus  above 
surrender  to  the  joy-giving  Saviour  is  a  travesty 
on  the  Son  of  God.    The  seal  on  Adam  Clark's 


30  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

grave,  to  which  I  have  referred,  is  a  candle  burned 
down  to  the  socket.  Underneath  are  the  words 
''In  living  for  others,  I  am  burned  away.'* 
Livingstone  burned  out  his  life  that  he  might  over- 
throw the  slave  trade  of  Africa.  Aristotle  said, 
* '  No  great  genius  was  ever  without  some  admix- 
ture of  madness."  It  was  this  joy  in  service,  this 
uncalculating  devotion  which  has  proven  itself 
mighty  to  change  the  hearts  of  men,  and  the  age 
in  which  it  has  lived.  It  was  not  Erasmus,  the 
polished,  the  learned,  the  vacillating,  the 
mightiest  intellect  of  his  time,  but  it  was  rough, 
yearning,  burning  Martin  Luther  who  made  Ger- 
many. In  his  last  sermon  Joseph  Parker  said, 
*'As  long  as  the  church  of  God  is  one  of  many 
institutions,  she  will  have  her  little  day.  She  will 
die  and  that  will  be  all.  But  just  as  soon  as  she 
gets  the  spirit  of  Jesus  until  the  world  thinks  she 
has  gone  stark  mad,  then  we  shall  be  on  the  high 
road  to  capture  this  planet  for  Jesus." 

One  fears  that  in  some  quarters  the  pulpit  has 
lost  its  nerve  and  forgotten  the  evidence  of  his- 
tory, that  whenever  Christianity  has  been  most 
convincing  she  has  been  most  victorious,  and 
whenever  she  has  been  most  apologetic,  she  has 
been  most  futile;  and  also  that  it  is  the  schools 
within  Christianity  which  are  constructive  and 
aggressive,  and  not  the  schools  that  are  critical 
and  eclectic  which  have  chiefly  affected  their  gen- 
eration.   If,  as  some  think,  our  fathers  were  too 


THE  PASSION  OF  JESUS  31 

sure  about  everything,  it  would  be  an  immense 
gain  if  some  of  their  children  were  absolutely 
certain  of  anything.  It  would  be  a  great  disaster 
if  the  intellect  of  the  Church  should  be  so  occupied 
in  recasting  the  form  of  the  Scriptures  as  to  have 
no  strength  left  for  declaring  the  Gospel  which 
they  contain.  Is  it  not  time  that  the  strength  of 
the  ministry  were  withdrawn  from  purely  intel- 
lectual exercises,  from  purely  intellectual  investi- 
gations and  destructive  criticism  and  given  to 
evangelism?  Have  we  not  had  enough  of  re- 
canting? Is  it  not  time  for  some  confessing?  We 
are  justified  in  disbelieving  the  things  which  have 
not  been  proven,  only  if  we  believe  and  practice 
upon  the  things  which  have  been  proven.  There 
are  some  who  seem  to  be  ready  to  refuse  to  believe 
anything  which  our  fathers  believed,  and  are  quite 
ready  to  accept  anything  if  it  is  not  in  the  Bible. 
A  book  which  denies  is  supposed  to  be  honest  and 
thoughtful,  and  a  book  which  affirms,  it  is  taken 
for  granted,  must  be  narrow  and  prejudiced. 
Those  who  doubt  everything  which  the  Church  has 
held  for  nineteen  centuries  give  themselves  amus- 
ing airs  of  superiority,  and  the  people  who  hold 
the  heart  of  the  Christian  creed  are  likely  to  be 
regarded  with  intellectual  pity.  There  is  one  thing 
worse  than  the  arrogance  of  wisdom  and  that  is 
the  arrogance  of  learning,  for  the  learned  man 
ought  to  be  broad  enough  to  know  better.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  there  is  no  more  ability  in  doubt- 


32  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

ing  than  in  believing.  If  there  is  a  bigotry  of 
orthodoxy  there  is  also  a  bigotry  of  heterodoxy, 
and  the  last  appears  to  be  the  more  insolent. 
Why  should  so  many  prefer  the  evidence  of  non- 
religious  persons  on  faith  to  those  who  are  its 
chief  experimental  witnesses  ?  It  does  not  follow 
that  because  Darwin  knew  about  earth  worms 
that  he  was  an  authority  on  the  soul ;  or  because 
Mr.  Huxley  was  a  most  lucid  teacher  of  natural 
science  that  he  had  any  right  to  say  the  last  word 
on  miracles.  Even  in  religion  one  must  be  scien- 
tific and  depend  not  upon  amateurs  but  upon 
experts.  "In  the  high  affairs  of  faith,  are  we  not 
more  likely  to  arrive  at  the  truth  by  listening  to 
the  saints  than  by  listening  to  persons  whose 
admirable  studies  have  been  among  the  lower 
animals  ? '  *  John  Watson  says  there  are  only  two 
provinces  of  absolutely  sure  knowledge — one  is 
pure  mathematics  and  the  other  is  the  experience 
of  the  soul.  "If  Paul  had  a  right  to  say  *I,^  and 
we  allow  him  to  be  a  conscious  being,  then  he  had 
a  right  to  say  *I  know.*  And  if  it  be  granted 
that  he  could  know  anything,  he  had  perfect  right 
to  finish  his  sentence,  and  say,  'I  know  whom  I 
have  believed,*  and  we  can  do  no  better  than  to 
accept  the  certainty  of  such  experience." 

Faith  is  the  center  of  the  financial  world.  From 
the  man  who  sends  his  goods  for  money  he  has 
not  seen  to  the  man  who  accepts  the  last  dictum 
of  science,  we  move  in  this  world  by  faith.    Un- 


THE  PASSION  OF  JESUS  33 

belief  blocks  the  wheels  of  all  progress.  Only 
faith  can  right  a  ruined  world.  Only  faith  can 
make  men  lay  down  their  arms  and  pick  up  the 
ax  and  the  shovel,  and  faith  finds  its  highest 
exemplification  in  the  matters  of  the  soul. 


Chapter  II 
THE  TABLE-TALK  OF  JESUS 


CHAPTER  n 

THE   TABLE-TALK    OF    JESUS 

The  table-talk  of  great  men  is  always  fascinat- 
ing. It  is  supposed  to  be  the  measure  of  a  man 
when  he  is  among  his  friends  and  can  speak  un- 
hindered by  fear  of  misunderstanding  or  failure 
to  appreciate.  It  is  years  since  I  read  the  table- 
talk  of  Martin  Luther;  from  it  I  gained  a  new 
idea  of  the  great  throbbing  heart  and  the  human 
interest  of  that  great  leader  of  the  Protestant 
Reformation.  To  another  generation  the  table- 
talk  of  Hazlitt  was  full  of  literary  surprises  and 
nuggets  of  wisdom,  the  depository  of  much  that 
would  otherwise  have  been  lost  to  the  world,  and 
the  loss  of  which  would  have  made  the  world- 
poorer.  The  master  reporter  of  table-talk  is  Bos- 
well.  It  is  Boswell  who  gave  Samuel  Johnson 
to  the  world.  One  hardly  knows  at  times  which  to 
admire  the  most — the  stern  old  philosopher  or  the 
loving  scribe,  who  sets  apples  of  gold  in  pictures 
of  silver.  We  like  to  know  what  men  thought  it 
worth  while  to  talk  about  to  their  friends, — what 
were  the  values  that  they  held  to  be  supreme. 
When  there  was  no  reason  to  trim  one^s  sails  to 

37 


38  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

social,  political  or  ecclesiastical  trade  winds,  how 
did  they  sail  their  crafts'? 

Perhaps  there  is  no  remark  of  Daniel  Webster's 
more  frequently  quoted  than  the  one  he  is  said 
to  have  made  at  a  table  where  distinguished 
friends  had  gathered.  One  asked,  "What  is  the 
most  important  question  you  were  ever  called 
upon  to  consider?''  His  questioner  may  have 
thought  of  the  great  legal  and  political  questions 
which  had  been  submitted  to  the  great  lawyer. 
He  may  have  had  in  mind  some  of  the  grave  ques- 
tions concerning  our  Republic,  but  Mr.  Webster, 
running  his  eye  down  the  table,  asked,  '  *  Are  there 
any  outsiders  here?"  "No,  sir,  all  are  your 
friends. ' '  With  deepest  solemnity  of  manner  the 
great  man  said,  "The  most  important  question 
that  ever  engaged  my  mind  is  that  of  my  personal 
responsibility  to  Almighty  God." 

I  am  sure  the  world  is  agreed  that  of  all  the 
table-talk  which  has  been  caught  by  devout  dis- 
ciples from  the  lips  of  statesmen  and  philosophers 
and  passed  on  to  a  listening  and  adoring  multi- 
tude, none  is  so  full  of  meaning  or  read  with 
such  rapt  attention  as  that  which  fell  from  His 
lips  who  spoke  as  never  man  spake.  We  have 
some  of  His  words  reported  to  us  by  His  friends. 
How  we  long  for  the  thousands  that  must  have 
dropped  by  the  wayside,  or  at  the  morning  or 
evening  meal.  What  a  sweet  hyperbole  is  that 
of  John,  "And  there  are  also  many  other  things 


THE  TABLE-TALK  OF  JESUS         39 

which  Jesus  did,  which  if  they  should  be  written 
every  one,  I  suppose  that  even  the  world  itself 
could  not  contain  the  books  which  would  be  writ- 
ten." If  the  world  today  could  find  some  new 
word  which  He  thus  spoke  to  His  disciples,  ita 
presses  would  run  night  and  day  until  every  last 
citizen  could  have  another  message  from  His  lips. 
Parables  like  those  which  now  gladden  the  world 
must  have  fallen  without  stint  from  His  blessed 
lips.  A  few  of  them  have  been  preserved  for  us 
and  make  us  rich  indeed, 

Jesus  was  a  famous  diner-out.  His  enemies 
charged  upon  him,  that  while  John  came  as  an 
ascetic,  Jesus  was  "a  glutton  and  a  wine  bibber.'* 
You  do  not  think  of  it  in  that  fashion,  but  close 
examination  will  impress  one  with  the  humor  of 
Jesus.  Who  can  read  His  parables,  if  he  reads 
with  discrimination,  without  a  smile;  and  then 
how  intense  He  was.  *'If  your  eye  offend  you, 
pluck  it  out";  '*if  your  hand  offend  you,  cut  it 
off. ' '  Go  drown  yourself  rather  than  say  a  word  , 
that  shall  offend  one  of  these  little  ones.  And' 
what  paradoxes  were  His!  He  that  would  save 
his  life  shall  lose  it.  He  that  would  lose  his  life 
shall  save  it.  It  was  the  heart  of  the  man  that 
was  thrilling  in  all  His  table-talk.  It  was  the  love 
of  His  soul,  the  zeal  that  was  burning  and  fairly 
consuming  Him  that  manifests  itself  here.  His 
whole  life  could  be  epitomized  in  the  single  sen- 
tence **He  had  a  passion  for  saving  the  lost." 


40  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

And  at  these  wonderful  dinner  parties,  this  mes- 
sage thrills  out. 

The  table-talks  of  Jesus  are  not  an  interlude 
to  His  passion,  they  are  a  part  of  it.  They  are 
introduced  here  to  show  that  in  the  most  intimate 
social  relations  in  life  one  thought  is  ever  upper- 
most. He  never  temporized;  He  never  kept  the 
yearning  of  His  heart  out  of  sight.  Whether  He 
talked  with  Pharisee,  or  Sadducee,  or  publican,  or 
sinner,  in  public  or  in  the  privacy  of  their  own 
home,  before  the  interview  was  over  He  had 
told  them  in  some  form  the  one  glorious  fact  that 
was  epitomized  in  Him — ''I  am  come  that  ye 
might  have  life  and  that  ye  might  have  it  more 
abundantly."  The  table-talks  of  Jesus  are  such 
talks  as  a  father  might  give  with  his  arm  around 
the  neck  of  a  thoughtless  or  a  sinning  child.  This 
was  what  He  meant  when  He  said,  *' Whoso  hath 
seen  me  hath  seen  the  Father." 

Here  are  two  dinner  parties  that  we  may  first 
consider.  After  Matthew,  the  publican,  was 
called  from  his  disreputable  profession,  he  did  a 
rather  brave  thing.  He  gave  a  farewell  dinner 
to  his  old  friends  in  office  to  celebrate  his  going 
away,  and  he  invited  Jesus.  I  suppose  he  wanted 
the  old  comrades  to  see  what  sort  of  a  man  He 
was  to  whom  he  had  given  his  allegiance,  and  it 
may  be  that  he  had  hopes  the  Master's  presence 
and  love  would  do  for  them  what  it  had  done  for 
him.    One   almost   wonders   at   the   courage   of 


THE  TABLE-TALK  OF  JESUS         41 

Matthew  to  invite  the  friends  of  the  old  life  to 
meet  the  One  who  had  led  him  to  the  new. 
Matthew  must  have  been  satisfied  that  his  old 
friends  would  feel  at  home  with  Him  and  he  knew 
that  whatever  Jesus  said  would  be  said  with  a 
kindly  heart,  with  no  sense  of  aloofness,  and  least 
of  all  with  any  sense  of  the  attitude  of  the  Phari- 
see. What  do  you  suppose  the  scribes  and  Phari- 
sees, the  members  of  the  church,  the  high-toned 
leaders  of  Capernaum  said  when  they  heard  of  it? 
Do  you  wonder  that  they  attacked  His  disciples 
and  said,  ''Why  eateth  your  Master  with  publicans 
and  sinners  ?  What  does  He  have  in  common  with 
them?"  You  would  not  expect  in  our  time  a  lot 
of  grafters  and  men  of  doubtful  reputation  to  be 
especially  eager  to  meet  the  Archbishop  of  Can- 
terbury or  the  Greek  Primate.  In  whatever  talks 
Jesus  had  with  Matthew  before — and  he  must 
have  had  many  of  them — we  do  not  know  what 
approaches  He  made,  or  what  Matthew  said,  but 
at  last  He  came  one  day  to  the  tax  gatherers' 
office  and  said  unto  him,  ''Follow  me."  Matthew 
must  have  leaped  with  delight  to  think  that  all  he 
had  done  that  was  selfish  and  evil  was  so 
thoroughly  forgotten  or  forgiven  that  Jesus 
wanted  him  to  be  with  Him,  and  when  he  heard 
that  call  he  left  all  and  followed  Him.  I  suppose 
Matthew  never  forgot  his  old  business  and  the 
stigma  which  went  with  it.  I  confess  there  is  a 
tug  at  my  heart  as  I  see  where  this  humble  dis- 


42  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

ciple,  when  he  wrote  the  list  of  the  apostles,  put 
in  his  own  name  and  did  not  forget  to  round  it 
out  by  saying  ''And  Matthew,  the  publican.'' 
Much  that  He  said  there  we  have  no  record  of, 
but  with  such  a  company  and  with  such  a  host, 
we  know  almost  as  well  as  if  it  were  written  down, 
what  He  would  have  said.  We  know  His  stainless 
purity  would  humble  them,  but  we  know  also  Hia 
infinite  yearning  would  make  itself  manifest,  so 
that  they  would  see  He  loved  them  so  that  He  was 
willing  to  die  for  them.  That  was  why  publicans 
and  sinners  drew  near  to  hear  Him,  that  was 
why  the  common  people  heard  Him  gladly.  He 
opened  His  heart  to  them.  He  told  them  of  His 
love.  You  remember  how  Jesus  answered  the 
Pharisees  who  murmured  because  He  had  gone 
to  Levi's  house,  "They  that  are  whole  need  not 
the  physician,  but  they  that  are  sick.  I  came  not 
to  call  the  righteous  but  the  sinners  to  repent- 
ance.'* 

Then  there  was  another  dinner.  This  time  He  is 
invited  to  a  Pharisee's  house.  It  was  after  a  busy 
day  that  Jesus  had  an  evening  engagement  to 
dine  with  Simon,  the  Pharisee.  That  dinner  has 
been  heard  of  throughout  the  world,  not  because  of 
the  palace  in  which  it  was  served  and  not  because 
of  the  courses  which  crowded  the  table,  but  simply 
because  of  one  broken-hearted  woman  who  was  a 
sinner  and  who  intruded  herself  upon  the  feast. 
It  looks  as  if  she  had  met  Him  before  and  that 


THE  TABLE-TALK  OF  JESUS         43 

she  had  already  some  cause  for  gratitude.  Can 
you  not  picture  her — you  who  have  seen  her  like 
in  the  great  city?  Do  you  not  understand  why 
she  came  there?  Can  you  not  see  the  pictures  of 
the  days  of  innocence,  which  floated  before  her 
eyes,  maybe  of  a  home  of  prayer;  of  an  anxious 
father  and  mother  from  whom  she  had  turned; 
of  the  promises  made  to  them  which  she  had 
broken ;  of  the  promises  made  to  her  which  others 
had  broken?  And  so  the  poor  girl  with  broken 
heart  and  broken  life  steals  in  to  the  feast. 
Whether  she  had  told  Him  her  story  before  or 
not,  we  do  not  know.  Whether  she  had  heard  that 
wonderful  story  of  the  lost  boy,  we  cannot  tell, 
but  at  any  rate,  in  some  way,  hope  stirs  in  her 
heart  and  a  changed  life  stretches  before  her, 
pointed  out  by  the  tender  love  of  the  Man  who 
sits  there  at  the  feast.  Her  attitude  is  not  one 
of  importunity,  it  is  rather  one  of  passionate 
gratitude  for  something  already  granted  her. 
Maybe  she  is  just  leaving  Capernaum  to  go  back 
to  her  mother  and  begin  a  new  life,  and  this  is 
her  last  chance  of  showing  her  love.  You  picture 
the  scene — the  guests  reclining  on  couches  around 
the  board,  their  feet  resting  on  cushions,  and  then 
this  poor  woman  throwing  herself  with  passion- 
ate sobbing  at  the  feet  of  the  Master.  The  veil 
is  off  her  face  and  the  fastenings  from  her  hair. 
If  anything  was  necessary,  these  are  the  things 
which  tell  of  her  life.    An  alabaster  box  of  oint- 


44  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

ment  she  pours  on  His  feet  and  with  her  glorious 
hair  she  wipes  them  and  presses  her  lips  on  them 
with  adoring  devotion. 

Of  course  everybody  is  disturbed.  Simon  is 
courteous  and  condescending  to  his  guest.  The 
neighbors  are  saying,  "This  prophet  must  have 
known  about  the  woman.  Why  does  He  let  her 
touch  himT'  Simon's  thoughts  are  plainly 
stamped  upon  his  face.  And  now  listen, — * '  Simon, 
I  have  somewhat  to  say  to  thee."  With  some 
restraint  and  rather  sadly,  Simon  says,  "Rabbi, 
say  on.'*  And  then  comes  the  story  of  the  big 
debtor  and  the  small  one  and  how  the  gracious 
creditor  forgave  them  both,  and  the  query  which 
of  the  two  loved  the  giver  most.  We  hear  Simon 
saying,  "That  does  not  interest  me,  but  I  presume 
the  one  to  whom  he  forgave  most. ' '  Now  Simon, 
it  is  your  turn.  It  may  be  the  Master's  hand  crept 
down  his  seamless  robe  and  rested  upon  the  head 
of  the  penitent,  "I  would  not  have  mentioned  it, 
Simon,  but  when  I  came  to  your  house,  you  did 
not  even  offer  me  water  for  my  feet;  but  this 
woman  has  wet  my  feet  with  her  tears  and  wiped 
them  with  her  hair.  You  gave  me  no  kiss  of 
greeting,  but  she,  from  the  time  I  came  in,  has 
not  ceased  to  kiss  my  feet.  My  head  with  oil  you 
did  not  anoint,  but  she  hath  anointed  my  feet  with 
ointment.  Wherefore  I  say  unto  you,  her  sins 
which  are  many,  are  forgiven,  for  she  loved  much ; 
but  to  whom  little  is  forgiven,  the  same  loveth 


THE  TABLE-TALK  OF  JESUS         45 

little."  Is  there  any  story  that  shows  more 
tenderly  the  yearning  of  the  Master's  heart? 
There  are  many  who  identify  this  woman  with 
Mary  Magdalen,  and  that  fact  is  "imbedded  in 
centuries  of  Christian  art  and  literature,"  and 
the  name  will  always  persist  as  a  synonym  for  a 
fallen  but  penitent  woman.  If  it  is  true,  is  it 
not  a  beautiful  and  thrilling  thing  to  see  how  the 
devotion  of  that  once  abandoned  woman  never 
failed  by  so  much  as  a  jot  until  the  end?  She  was 
one  of  the  few  who  saw  Him  die  on  Calvary,  and 
regardless  of  the  contumely  and  insult  which 
might  be  heaped  upon  her,  she  followed  His  body 
to  the  grave  and  was  the  first  at  the  sepulchre  on 
the  glorious  Easter  morning.  With  agonizing 
heart,  she  cries  to  him  whom  she  took  to  be  the 
gardener;  "Sir,  if  thou  hast  borne  Him  hence, 
tell  me  where  and  I  will  take  Him  away,"  and 
with  the  same  voice  that  at  first  spoke  peace  to 
her  repentant  soul,  her  Lord  spoke  the  one  word 
'  *  Mary ! ' '  Nobody  else  ever  said  it  that  way ;  into 
no  other  voice  could  such  pure  and  tender  solici- 
tude be  pressed.  In  an  instant  she  knew  the  glad 
truth  that  her  Lord  was  risen,  and  she  fell  at 
His  feet  crying,  "My  Master,  my  Master!" 

How  anybody  could  think  of  that  dinner  in  the 
house  of  Simon,  the  Pharisee,  and  what  the  Master 
said,  and  all  that  flowed  out  of  it  and  still  re- 
main indifferent  to  those  who  long  for  the  saving 
grace   which   comes    from   unstinted   love   must 


46  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

snrely  pass  human  knowledge.  It  is  a  heart  of 
stone  that  can  remain  stolid,  when  he  thinks  of 
what  happened  and  how  the  joy  of  it  never  faded 
away,  but  was  crowned  with  glory  on  the  resur- 
rection morning.  Small  wonder  that  when  Renan 
was  looking  around  for  someone  whom  he  could 
make  responsible  for  a  resurrection  which  he 
wished  to  deny,  he  should  have  cried,  "Divine 
power  of  love,  sacred  moments  in  which  the  pas- 
sion of  an  hallucinated  woman  gives  to  the  world 
a  resurrected  God!"  Is  it  strange  that  Renan 's 
book  and  his  theories  were  buried  with  him,  while 
the  whole  Christian  world  stands  in  adoring 
wonder  at  Mary's  side? 

It  was  at  another  Pharisee's  table  that  He  smote 
the  heart  of  the  cold  and  proud  by  telling  of  those 
who  give  tithes  of  what  amounts  to  nothing — the 
mint  and  anise  and  en  mm  in — and  neglect  the 
mightier  matters  of  the  law.  When  His  host  com- 
plains that  he  had  not  performed  the  usual  ablu- 
tion, He  showed  the  folly  of  those  who  were  more 
anxious  to  have  clean  hands  than  clean  hearts, 
who  looked  at  the  outside  of  the  cup  but  paid 
no  attention  to  the  filth  that  was  within. 

It  was  at  the  table  of  Simon,  the  leper,  that 
another  Mary  showed  a  love  without  bound  or 
limit,  bom  in  homely  fellowship,  perfected  at  her 
brother's  grave.  Perhaps  the  cap  of  the  alabaster 
box  refused  to  open,  and  in  her  haste  she  broke 


THE  TABLE-TALK  OF  JESUS         47 

the  box  and  poured  the  ointment,  fit  for  a  king, 
upon  the  head  she  loved. 

It  was  when  the  utilitarian  spirit  flared  out,  as 
it  has  done  in  all  the  days  since ;  it  was  when  those 
who  take  no  account  of  love  and  sacrifice  and  holy 
ideals  but  who  weigh  everything  on  the  scales  of 
self-interest  and  measure  everything  by  worldly 
standards — it  was  when  such  people  were  taking 
all  merit  out  of  a  noble  act  and  making  it  only  an 
impetuous  movement  of  an  ill-balanced  mind,  that 
Jesus  lifted  this  little  woman  upon  a  pedestal  so 
high  that  all  the  world  will  see  her  till  the  crack 
of  doom!  Can  anybody  have  any  question  as  to 
what  Jesus  thinks  of  uncalculating  service?  Can 
anybody  ever  think  of  offering  Jesus  anything  but 
their  best  after  this  ?  There  it  stands ;  let  it  never 
be  blotted  out.  Let  it  be  written  on  the  fleshly 
tablet  of  every  devoted  heart  that  is  willing  to 
pay  the  price  that  his  Lord  demands — ''Verily  I 
say  unto  you,  wheresoever  this  gospel  shall  be 
preached  throughout  the  whole  world,  there  shall 
also  this,  that  this  woman  hath  done,  be  told  for 
a  memorial  of  her. '  ^  There  is  at  least  one  pedestal 
in  the  temple  of  fame  which  God  has  set  up  that 
will  never  be  vacant.  With  reverence  let  us  muse 
upon  the  reason! 

Those  who  are  troubled  by  many  things,  who 
are  examples  of  what  Emerson  said,  ' '  Things  are 
in  the  saddle  and  they  ride  mankind,'^  let  them 
stand  behind  the  Master  at  Martha's  simple  feast. 


48  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

**  Jesus  loved  Martha  and  her  sister  and  Lazarus." 
Three  different  types.  The  anxious  housekeeper, 
with  a  sense  of  responsibility,  who  brings  things 
to  pass,  a  good  manager,  a  capable  woman  who 
has  to  be  responsible  for  things.  Here  is  one  type 
of  those  who  hide  their  own  feelings  and  never 
like  to  see  others  express  theirs.  Sentiment  does 
not  appeal  to  her  and  she  is  quite  inclined  to 
take  to  task  any  whom  she  calls  mystical,  emo- 
tional, sentimental.  Martha  has  her  good  points, 
may  she  never  disappear  from  the  family.  The 
wheels  of  daily  life  would  drive  heavily  without 
her.  When  her  dear  old  hands  are  folded,  more 
tears  will  be  shed  for  her  possibly  than  she  has 
shed  for  others,  but  if  Martha  can  only  under- 
stand the  gentle  reproof  of  the  Saviour,  she  will 
know  that  the  sister  whom  she  calls  a  dreamer, 
who  indulges  in  holy  contemplation,  and  nourishes 
a  devout  soul,  is  one  of  the  pure  in  heart  who 
see  God  and  are  thereby  the  more  lovable.  *  *  She 
hath  chosen  the  good  jpart  which  shall  not  be 
taken  from  her."  Let  Martha  and  Mary  twine 
their  arms  around  each  other.  They  will  each 
be  the  stronger  for  the  other's  presence.  Jesus 
says,  ''Don't  fret,  Martha,  put  the  first  things 
first,  and  all  things  shall  work  together  for  good." 
As  for  Lazarus,  for  whom  the  feast  is  given, 
from  him  we  hear  nothing.  Paterson  Smith  re- 
calls the  suggestion  that  he  was  the  young  ruler 
who  once  made  the  great  refusal,  whom  Jesus 


THE  TABLE-TALK  OF  JESUS         49 

beholding  loved  and  kissed  him  on  t]ie  brow.  Per- 
haps that  is  not  true,  but  at  any  rate,  Jesus  loved 
him  with  the  yearning  of  a  great  heart,  and  Martha 
and  Mary  knew  that  as  much  as  He  loved  them, 
Lazarus  was  preeminent,  for  they  named  him  to 
Jesus,  "Him  whom  thou  lovest."  From  that 
dinner  table  may  the  love  which  gives  each  heart 
its  place  around  the  family  board  be  passed  to 
every  home ! 

Of  all  the  Master's  words  at  table,  surely  none 
were  so  precious  as  those  He  spoke  at  the  last 
supper,  when  He  was  host  himself.  He  and  His 
disciples  knew  it  was  the  last  talk  He  would  have 
with  them  before  He  faced  the  tragedy  which  they 
could  neither  appreciate  nor  understand.  We  are 
minded  of  a  scene  three  hundred  years  before 
when  the  sacred  ship  had  come  back  from  Delos 
and  the  eleven  had  stricken  off  his  chains  that 
Socrates  might  drink  the  fatal  hemlock,  and  his 
jailer  was  saying,  "He  was  the  gentlest  and  best 
that  ever  came  here. ' '  But  beautiful  as  was  that 
scene  against  the  clear  blue  of  the  Grecian  sky 
and  beautiful  as  was  that  cheery  message  of  him 
who  was  going  out  upon  a  great  adventure,  this  is 
an  hour  before  which  all  other  human  farewells 
shine  with  a  lessening  ray. 

Since  there  were  no  servants  to  do  it,  Jesus  had 
washed  His  disciples'  feet  and  said  to  them,  "He 
that  would  be  chief  among  you,  let  him  be  the 


50  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

servant  of  all. ' '  Judas  has  gone  out  ' '  and  it  was 
night." 

"What  does  he  say  as  a  pattern  for  all  those 
hours  when  the  disciples  talk  together?  The  one 
word  which  is  in  the  air  when  words  can  be  but 
few,  the  one  word  which  rolls  in  infinite  reitera- 
tion from  His  lips  is  the  word  which  was  the  center 
of  His  life  and  of  His  kingdom — *'Love."  Here 
is  a  new  command — ' '  That  ye  love  one  another  as 
I  have  loved  you."  Here  is  the  measure  of  your 
discipleship — "Ye  are  my  disciples  if  ye  love  one 
another.  The* measure  of  your  love  for  me  will  be 
the  measure  of  your  union  with  me.  If  ye  love 
me,  ye  will  keep  my  commandments."  And  then 
He  falls  to  talking  about  the  same  thing  that 
Socrates  talked  about,  only  with  an  assurance  and 
depth  of  meaning  which  Socrates  never  knew,  and 
with  good  reason. 

We  are  inclined  to  say  with  Philip  of  Spain, 
who,  when  asked  if  he  had  noticed  the  eclipse, 
said,  **No,  I  am  so  busy  with  things  down  here 
that  I  have  no  time  to  look  up. ' '  There  are  many 
who  are  restive  at  any  word  concerning  the  future 
life.  Not  so  Jesus.  He  revelled  in  it.  His  last 
table-talk  was  pitched  to  the  tune  of  it — *'Let  not 
your  heart  be  troubled.  I  am  going  away  from 
you.  In  my  Father's  house  are  many  mansions. 
I  am  going  to  prepare  a  home  for  you  and  we  are 
all  of  us  going  to  be  there.    Here  you  will  be 


THE  TAJBLE-TALK  OF  JESUS         51 

lonely  and  you  will  be  troubled,  but  I  shall  be 
thinking  of  you  and  waiting  for  you. ' ' 

If  we  could  live  on  here  without  headache  or 
heartache ;  if  we  could  feel  no  want  and  know  no 
poverty;  if  no  bitter  words  were  spoken,  and  no 
unkindly  acts  done ;  if  nobody  grew  old,  and  love 
was  never  disappointed ;  if  no  red  flag  ever  waved, 
and  the  sexton  never  plied  his  spade,  what  a  world 
this  would  be !  But  Jesus  said  over  the  table  at 
the  last  supper,  ''I  am  going  to  get  a  place  like 
that  ready  for  you/* 

Sam  Johnson  said  he  didn't  like  Wesley,  for 
just  as  he  got  his  legs  under  the  table  for  a  long 
talk,  "Wesley  would  run  off  to  see  some  old  woman 
who  was  in  want.  Here  the  days  and  nights  of 
friendship  are  short.  Here  we  cry,  ''AH  hail," 
and  in  the  next  instant,  ' '  Good-by.  It  is  time  to 
go."  Jesus  said  that  His  was  a  land  of  perfect 
fellowship,  and  there  was  never  to  be  any  night 
with  its  darkness  and  separation.  We  say,  "I 
shall  always  be  thinking  of  you,"  but  Jesus  said 
more;  He  said,  "I  shall  always  be  with  you. 
You  will  not  see  me,  but  I  will  be  there,  closer 
than  breathing,  nearer  than  iiands  and  feet.  The 
Holy  Spirit,  one  with  me  and  the  Father,  will 
walk  and  talk  with  you.  He  will  lead  you  into  the 
paths  of  truth.  He  will  be  your  comforter  in 
trouble,  your  wisdom  in  ignorance,  and  will  bring 
you  safely  through.  Lo,  I  am  with  you  always, 
even  unto  the  end  of  the  world." 


52  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

After  that  they  sang  a  song — His  song — ^but  the 
message  of  it  all  was  "death  does  not  make  any 
difference  with  love."  We  can  say  to  those  to 
whom  our  hearts  are  bound : 

"Thee  I  loved  always, 
I  love  still  but  thee, 
And  thee  will  I  love 
Through  eternity." 

Death  is  only  crossing  a  seam  in  the  carpet, 
passing  through  an  open  door.  Here  and  there 
and  always,  love  never  faileth.  These  are  the 
messages  which  fell  from  His  lips  when  He  who 
spake  as  never  man  spake,  talked  with  His  friends 
and  with  the  world  out  of  His  heart.  Do  you 
not  feel  the  passion  of  them  and  do  they  not  awake 
an  answering  passion  in  your  own  soul? 


Chapteb  III 
HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 


CHAPTER  m 

HERALDS   OF   A   PASSION 

We  cannot  be  heralds  of  our  Lord's  passion 
unless  we  enter  into  the  fellowship  of  His  suffer- 
ing. He  has  left  behind  Him  in  the  path  He  trod 
a  message  written  in  His  blood  and  fastened  with 
a  nail  to  His  cross — *'If  any  man  will  come  after 
me,  let  him  deny  himself  and  take  up  his  cross 
daily  and  follow  me."  We  long  for  His  triumph 
and  are  fain  to  have  some  humble  part  in  it,  but 
the  condition  on  which  we  gain  it  is  found  in  the 
words,  ''If  so  be  that  we  suffer  with  Him,  that 
we  may  be  also  glorified  together."  If  we  may 
attain  unto  that  any  price  will  be  cheap.  The 
apostle  was  so  convinced  of  that  that  he  cries,  ''I 
reckon  that  the  sufferings  of  this  present  time  are 
not  worthy  to  be  compared  with  the  glory  that 
shall  be  revealed  to  us-ward."  How  can  any  of 
us  dare  to  represent  Christ  to  men  if  we  do  not 
know  something  of  the  thrill  of  His  passion,  if  we 
do  not  yearn  after  the  souls  of  men  so  that  we  can 
cry  concerning  our  own  flock,  as  John  Knox  cried 
for  Scotland,  "Give  me — or  I  die!"  This  and 
no  other  is  the  passion  which  has  transformed  the 
world.    Paul  had  caught  it  from  his  Master  when 

55 


56  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

he  exclaimed,  '*I  could  wish  that  I  myself  were 
anathema  from  Christ  for  my  brethren's  sake, 
my  kinsmen  according  to  the  flesh." 

It  is  a  wonder  that  we  can  go  through  the  sub- 
lime task  which  is  laid  upon  us  as  heralds  of  a 
passion  with  a  sense  that  it  is  an  ordinary  and 

"  common  task.  "I  marvel,"  said  the  old  Puritan, 
"how  I  can  preach  stolidly  and  coldly,  how  I  can 
let  men  alone  in  their  sins,  and  that  I  do  not  go 
to  them  and  beseech  them  for  the  Lord's  sake — 
however  they  take  it  and  whatever  pains  or  trouble 
it  should  cause  me.  When  I  come  out  of  my 
pulpit,  I  am  not  accused  of  want  of  ornaments 
or  elegance,  nor  of  letting  fall  an  unhandsome 
word,  but  my  conscience  asketh  me  'How  could 
you  speak  of  life  and  death  with  such  a  heart? 
How  couldst  thou  preach  of  heaven  and  hell  in 
such  a  careless  and  sleepy  manner?  Truly  this 
peal  of  the  conscience  doth  ring  in  my  ears,  *0 
Lord,  do  that  on  our  own  souls  that  thou  wouldst 
use  us  to  do  on  the  souls  of  others.'  "    Are  we  not 

»»to  get  a  verdict  %  Are  we  not  sent  out,  in  modem 
phrase,  to  actually  sell  goods?  What  boots  it 
us  that  when  we  come  down  from  the  pulpit  steps 
gracious  ladies  and  cultured  men  thank  us  for 
he  sermon,  but  do  not  surrender  their  souls  to 
the  will  of  their  Lord  ?  Is  preaching  a  proclama- 
tion of  a  sublime  and  insistent  truth,  or  is  it 
only  a  lovely  song  of  one  that  hath  a  pleasant  voice 
and  can  play  well  on  an  instrument? 


HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION  57 

Morley  says  of  Gladstone,  who  gained  in  Ms 
great  Midlothian  campaign,  when  over  seventy, 
one  of  the  greatest  oratorical  triumphs  of  history, 
that  '*he  bore  his  hearers  through  long  changes 
of  strenuous  periods  as  if  he  were  now  a  hunter 
and  now  an  eager  bird  of  prey,  now  a  charioteer 
of  fiery  steeds  kept  well  in  hand,  and  now  and 
again  we  seemed  to  hear  the  pity  or  dark  wrath 
of  a  prophet  with  the  mighty  rushing  of  wind  and 
the  fire  running  along  the  ground."  Would  that 
apply  to  much  of  our  preaching  today?  As  Dr. 
Jackson  asks,  ''Are  we  not  growing  too  quiet,  too 
tame,  too  subdued?  Are  we  not  sacrificing  to 
mere  literary  primness  and  prettiness  and  to  a 
mistaken  self-restraint?  Our  preaching,"  he  says, 
"is  too  dry-eyed;  there  is  no  red  blood  visible 
under  the  skin.  The  commonplace  is  not  vital- 
ized; the  thin  wire  of  words  is  charged  with  no 
current  that  quickens  and  thrills. ' '  Men  are  often 
apparently  eager  for  some  theoretical  truth  but 
oblivious  of  the  real  purpose  for  which  the  truth 
is  presented. 

Dr.  Bonar,  after  listening  to  a  minister  who 
was  preaching  with  great  gusto,  said  to  him, ' '  You 
love  to  preach,  don't  you?"  "Yes,  indeed,  I  do." 
"But,"  said  Bonar,  "do  you  love  the  men  to 
whom  you  preach?"  We  do  not  have  to  choose 
between  a  fervid  ignorance  and  a  passionless 
culture.  Thank  God,  we  may  have  both  a 
knowledge  and  a  zeal,  a  well  trained  mind  and  a 


58  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

warm  heart.  The  man  who  knows  the  most  ought 
to  feel  the  most  and  do  the  most.  The  material 
which  he  gets  together  ought  not  to  be  a  mass  of 
dead  fuel,  he  ought  to  touch  it  with  the  prophetic 
glow  that  shall  set  it  ablaze.  Only  the  divine 
fire  wrought  out  in  his  own  experience  and  con- 
viction can  do  that.  A  recent  writer  to  ministers 
has  said,  ''The  cold-blooded  pedantry  which 
affects  to  look  down  on  all  religious  zeal  as  relig- 
ious rant  is  being  suffered  to  inflict  the  gravest 
injury  upon  the  whole  life  and  work  of  the  church, 
and  not  least  upon  the  life  and  work  of  the 
preacher. '^  After  all,  nothing  is  so  touching  as 
an  honest  enthusiasm,  and  other  things  being 
equal,  it  is  the  man  who  is  himself  greatly  moved 
and  is  not  ashamed  to  let  it  be  seen,  who  will 
greatly  move  others.  Therefore,  if  a  preacher 
has  received  from  God  a  rich,  strong,  emotional 
nature,  let  him  give  no  heed  to  the  silly  clatter 
of  those  who  tell  him  he  has  no  right  to  work  on 
men's  feelings — as  if  religion  could  do  anything 
for  a  man  whose  feelings  are  not  worked  on !  Let 
him  give  his  zeal  full  play  and  he  will  find  it 
mighty  to  the  opening  of  many  doors  against 
which  his  most  profound  logic  will  beat  itself  in 
vain.  In  all  true  preaching  spiritual  passion  is  an 
essential  element. 

After  all,  it  matters  little  how  excellent  the  fuel 
if  the  fire  be  out.  All  that  a  man  has  of  intellec- 
tual strength  to  the  last  ounce,  he  can  put  into 


HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION  59 

the  work  of  preaching,  but  intellect  alone  can 
never  make  a  preacher,  and  the  man  with  no  more 
heart  than  can  be  made  out  of  brains  is  in  the 
wrong  place  in  the  pulpit.  Dr.  Chalmers  once 
compared  the  sermons  of  the  Moderates  to  a  finej 
winter's  day:  "They  were  short,  clear  and  cold.! 
Brevity  is  good,  and  clearness  is  better,  but  the 
coldness  is  fatal.  Moonlight  preaching  ripens  no 
harvest." 

Dr.^  Jackson  reminds  us  that  whoever  will  go 
over  the  great  names  in  the  history  of  the  Chris- 
tian pulpit  will  discover  that  the  passion  to  win 
men  is  the  ultimate  fountain  of  all  preaching  that 
is  of  the  prophetic  order.  Of  Rutherford  a  con- 
temporary said,  ''Many  a  time  I  thought  he  would 
have  flown  out  of  the  pulpit  when  he  came  to  speak 
of  Jesus  Christ."  John  Knox  was  supported  in 
his  old  age  by  attendants  to  his  place  in  the  pulpit, 
but  when  he  arose  to  speak,  the  divine  passion 
blazed  in  his  soul,  until,  one  of  his  friends  said, 
*'So  mighty  was  he  in  his  yearning  that  I  thought 
he  would  break  the  pulpit  into  bits."  Of  Joseph 
Alleine  it  was  said,  ''Infinite  and  insatiable  greed 
for  the  conversion  of  souls,  he  preached  with  far- 
reaching  voice,  flashing  eye  and  a  soul  on  fire  with 
love. ' ' 

Is  not  St.  Paul  the  best  of  all  examples  for  the 
preacher?  Hear  him  calling  himself  a  servant 
of  Jesus  Christ,  "separated  unto  the  Gospel  of 
God."     He  could  say,  "This  one  thing  I  do." 


60  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

The  divine  imperative  was  upon  his  soul.  *  *  I  must 
see  Rome,"  he  cried,  because  he  was  eager  there 
to  preach  the  gospel ;  and  shouts  with  holy  fervor, 
*'I  am  not  ashamed  of  the  Gospel  of  Christ,  for 
it  is  the  power  of  God  unto  salvation."  The 
record  shows  that  Paul  was  constrained  by  the 
word.  His  message  burned  like  a  fire  in  his  bones. 
His  passion  to  win  men  was  a  divine  constraint 
which  gave  him  no  rest.  By  the  space  of  three 
years,  he  told  the  Ephesian  elders,  "I  ceased  not 
to  admonish  every  one  night  and  day  with  tears.  * ' 
When  his  friends  urged  him  not  to  go  to  Jeru- 
salem, he  cried,  "I  am  ready  not  to  be  bound  only, 
but  also  to  die  at  Jerusalem  for  the  name  of  the 
Lord  Jesus."  Does  anyone  doubt  that  a  pas- 
sion like  that  had  been  kindled  by  the  altar  fire 
of  Christ's  own  life? 

What  words  are  these  from  the  hot  heart  of 
an  English  teacher  of  preachers !  * '  Shall  we  re- 
peat an  old  sermon?  Yes,  if  you  can  recover  the 
heat  in  which  it  was  first  made,  but  if  your  soul 
is  no  longer  kindled  by  it,  if  the  fire  is  gone  out 
of  it,  and  it  is  now  but  a  poor  dead  cinder,  then 
let  it  be  put  straightway  in  the  place  of  cinders. 
People  do  not  care  whether  your  sermon  is  old 
or  new;  the  only  question  is,  'Is  it  alive?'  Alas 
for  the  minister  who  forces  the  simple  folks  to 
say,  'What  he  says  is  faultless  enough,  but  it 
leaves  me  strangely  cold.'  So  will  it  be  if  the 
truth  which  once  was  a  glowing  conviction  at 


HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION  61 

which  men  warmed  their  hands  becomes  but  a  heap 
of  ashes  from  which  the  last  glint  of  fire  has  died 
out.  That  is  the  tragedy  of  more  pulpits  than 
one  cares  to  think  of." 

The  greatest  thing  in  the  world  is  love.  That 
never  faileth.  It  is  the  one  thing  which  He  asks 
of  us.  We  cannot  simulate  it,  if  we  wear  a  mask 
it  will  slip  sometime.  If  love  for  man  thrills  our 
every  act  the  world  will  take  knowledge  of  us  that 
we  have  been  with  Jesus* 


Chapter  IV 
HOLY  BOLDNESS 


CHAPTER  IV 

HOLY  BOLDNESS 

The  trouble  with  most  Christian  workers — 
ministers  and  laymen — is  that  they  are  afraid,  and 
now  as  of  old  fear  bringeth  a  snare.  We  are 
afraid  of  what  people  will  say,  for  the  moment  a 
man  does  anything  different  from  the  ordinary, 
that  moment  he  is  the  target  for  criticism.  Some 
will  call  him  too  zealous,  too  personal  and  too 
insistent.  It  is  only  perfect  love  and  perfect  con- 
fidence and  perfect  abandon  to  the  will  of  God 
that  casteth  out  fear  and  that  brings  the  per- 
sonal victory.  The  New  Testament  has  a  great 
deal  to  say  about  boldness.  We  often  quote  the 
passage  "They  took  knowledge  of  them  that  they 
had  been  with  Jesus."  But  why  did  they?  The 
record  says,  ''When  they  saw  the  boldness  of 
Peter  and  John.'^  So  it  seems  that  boldness  was 
associated  in  the  thought  of  the  people  with  the 
life  of  Jesus.  Again  the  apostle  says  that  he 
declared  the  truth  ''with  all  boldness,"  and  the  ef- 
fect of  that  truth  was  a  thrilling  one  on  himself  as 
well  as  on  those  who  heard.  Conviction  breeds 
conviction.  Hear  the  apostle  say  that  "In  noth- 
ing we  shall  be  ashamed,  but  that  with  all  bold- 

65 


66  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

ness  as  always  so  now  Christ  shall  be  magnified 
in  my  body  whether  by  life  or  by  death."  You 
cannot  hold  a  man  like  that — no  pent-up  Utica 
contracts  his  powers. 

So  everywhere  through  the  teachings  of  the 
apostles,  we  are  challenged  to  a  boldness  that 
is  not  arrogance,  or  simply  self-assertion,  or  dog- 
matism, but  an  authority  in  boldness  that  has  its 
birth  in  a  sense  of  the  mighty  consequences  that 
are  at  issue — a  sense  of  the  importance  and  im- 
minence of  a  decision  that  outreaches  time  and 
thought.  No  doubt  there  were  friends  who  stood 
by  and  said  to  John  the  Baptist,  "Be  careful 
what  you  say  to  Herod."  But  John  thundered 
the  truth  into  the  very  teeth  of  the  royal  sinner 
though  it  cost  him  his  own  head.  "Mind  what 
you  say  to  Felix,"  Paul's  anxious  companions 
might  have  said,  but  Paul  reasoned  of  righteous- 
ness and  of  judgment  to  come  until  the  knees  of 
the  proud  ruler  knocked  together.  "We  boldly 
proclaim  the  word,"  says  the  apostle  again  and 
again.  It  was  the  same  spirit  in  which  he  said 
concerning  himself  and  all  of  us  that  we  were  to 
come  holdly  to  the  throne  of  Christ  and  find  help 
in  every  time  of  need. 

Thousands  of  ministers  are  cribbed,  cabined 
and  confined  because  they  do  not  dare  to  make 
the  great  adventure.  Their  faith  fails  them — 
they  will  not  put  it  to  the  test.  If  they  could  only 
remember,  "if  thou  hast  faith  like  a  grain  of 


HOLY  BOLDNESS  67 

mustard  seed  thou  shalt  say  to  this  mountain,  re- 
move hence  to  yonder  place  and  it  shall  remove." 
So  many  men  who  will  not  leave  the  safe  harbor 
and  put  with  God  to  sea !  They  are  conventional 
and  smug  and  comfortable.  They  do  not  know 
the  joy  of  a  great  emprize.  In  this  matter  I  am 
speaking  out  of  my  own  experience.  I  know  the 
temptations  which  face  every  minister  through 
the  weakness  of  the  flesh.  Some  of  us  are  nat- 
urally timid  and  shrink  from  the  great  contests 
where  there  must  be  a  decision — a  victory  or  a 
defeat.  We  would  rather  avoid  it  if  we  can,  but 
if  we  do,  we  shall  only  know  the  shallows  of  life. 
For  the  comfort  of  some  of  my  brethren,  I 
do  not  mind  saying  that  again  and  again  in  my 
early  ministry,  I  was  put  to  the  test  which  almost 
overwhelmed  me.  More  than  once  I  have  walked 
around  a  city  block  before  I  could  get  up  courage 
to  go  to  the  door  and  talk  to  a  man  about  his  soul's 
interest.  I  shall  never  forget  the  struggle  of  my 
own  soul  when  I  was  asked  to  stand  on  the  steps 
of  the  City  Hall  in  New  York  and  to  address  an 
audience  of  many  thousands  of  men  in  the  open. 
As  chairman  of  the  Committee  on  Outdoor  Service 
for  the  Evangelistic  Committee  of  the  city,  it  was 
suggested  that  it  would  greatly  help  our  cause 
and  secure  for  our  work  helpful  publicity  if  we 
could  arrange  for  a  service  on  the  steps  of  the 
City  Hall.  When  I  asked  permission,  I  was  passed 
on  by  the  city  officials  from  one  department  to 


68  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

another,  but  at  last  permission  was  granted,  and 
we  were  told  that  we  should  have  all  the  police 
protection  that  was  necessary.  I  was  quite  aware 
that  in  my  audience  were  many  who  were  more 
inclined  to  scoff  than  to  pray.  I  knew  there  were 
anarchists  and  socialists  by  the  hundred  in  front 
of  me,  who  cared  for  none  of  these  things.  It 
was  not  an  easy  matter  to  screw  my  courage  to 
the  sticking  point  and  to  say  with  shut  teeth,  as 
Garrison  said  long  before,  **I  will  not  equivocate 
and  I  will  be  heard, ' '  and  say  without  fear  in  the 
face  of  all  classes  and  conditions  of  men  ''There 
is  none  other  name  given  under  heaven  among  men 
whereby  ye  must  be  saved  but  the  name  of  Jesus,'* 
or  to  say  with  Peter  on  the  day  of  Pentecost, 
"This  same  Jesus  ye  have  taken  and  by  wicked 
hands  have  crucified. ' ' 

It  was  not  an  easy  thing  for  me,  with  a  tem- 
perament that  shrinks  from  notoriety,  to  stand 
on  the  seat  of  an  automobile  in  Wall  Street,  under 
the  windows  of  J.  P.  Morgan's  office,  and  preach 
the  unsearchable  riches  of  Jesus  Christ  to  a  surg- 
ing crowd;  to  stand  on  the  steps  of  the  Custom 
House,  the  historic  spot  where  the  great  political 
leaders,  presidents  and  senators  of  the  United 
States  had  stood,  and  to  speak  to  thousands  of 
men,  who  looked  up  into  my  face,  concerning  the 
one  thing  to  which  I  had  been  called  in  the  Chris- 
tian ministry. 

But  out  of  every  one  of  these  experiences,  which 


HOLY  BOLDNESS  69 

were  so  trying  to  me  that  I  could  hardly  gather 
courage  to  speak,  there  came  such  grace  into  my 
own  heart  that  in  a  few  minutes  I  forgot  all 
about  the  crowd  and  only  remembered  my  mes- 
sage and  my  Master.  Scores  came  to  me  as  I 
spoke  at  these  places  and  told  me  how  they  had 
decided  to  go  back  to  their  old  manner  of  life  and 
to  accept  Jesus  Christ  as  their  Saviour.  Some 
of  them  were  back-sliders,  some  had  been  super- 
intendents and  local  preachers  and  class  leaders, 
but  they  had  come  into  the  city  and  had  hidden 
themselves  away.  They  had  said,  * '  I  have  worked 
hard  for  many  years,  now  I  will  rest.'*  In  rest- 
ing it  soon  happened  that  they  lost  their  zeal, 
and  soon  their  love  for  the  Master  had  become  cold 
and  indifferent.  I  had  the  pleasure  of  knowing 
that  in  many  cases  they  came  back  to  their  old  love 
and  united  themselves  for  vital  service  with  the 
Church  of  the  Living  God.  And  many  who  heard 
the  Gospel  for  the  first  time — aliens  by  wilful 
choice  and  wicked  life  from  the  kingdom  of  God 
— came  back  to  their  Father  *s  house  and  to  His 
yearning  love. 

It  was  when  I  stood  on  the  steps  of  the  City 
Hall,  bringing  home  to  the  members  of  the  church, 
with  all  the  force  of  which  I  was  capable,  the 
fact  that  they  were  chosen  of  God  for  the  world's 
redemption  and  that  they  needed  to  throw  them- 
selves with  uncalculating  devotion  into  the  work, 
that  I  repeated  several  times  the  two  words  which 


70  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

stand  at  the  head  of  this  chapter,  and  urged  that 
those  who  were  followers  of  Jesus,  who  counted 
not  His  own  life  dear  unto  Himself,  should  them- 
selves be  able  to  proclaim  with  boldness  His 
truths  and  to  stop  short  of  no  sacrifice  for  Him. 
I  delivered  my  soul  with  great  earnestness  of  the 
message  which  it  seemed  to  me  God  had  laid  upon 
my  heart.  It  was  some  weeks  after  that  when 
one  of  the  most  successful  preachers  in  America 
laid  his  hand  on  my  shoulder  and  said,  "I  owe  you 
a  debt  I  shall  never  be  able  to  pay,,  and  all  on 
account  of  two  words  which  you  used,  but  which 
I  believe  were  sent  by  the  Holy  Spirit.  "When  I 
went  home  after  hearing  your  message,  those  two 
words  kept  ringing  in  my  ears,  'Holy  boldness, 
holy  boldness,^  and  I  said  to  myself,  'You  are  a 
coward.  You  do  not  dare  to  venture.  You  will 
not  do  what  you  know  you  ought  to  do.  You  are 
afraid  of  that  fine  congregation  that  gathers  at 
your  morning  service.  You  want  to  observe  all 
the  proprieties  and  have  the  most  dignified  and 
proper  service.  You  would  not  dare  to  preach  a 
message  straight  to  their  hearts  and  to  urge  them 
to  give  themselves  to  Jesus  Christ  on  the  spot. 
You  would  not  dare  to  send  your  deacons  among 
that  congregation  and  ask  them  to  urge  men  and 
women  to  be  reconciled  to  God. '  I  thought  about 
it  and  I  prayed  about  it,  and  the  more  I  thought 
and  the  more  I  prayed,  the  more  the  conviction 
laid  hold  upon  me  that  I  must  make  the  great 


HOLY  BOLDNESS  71 

adventure.  In  order  to  preserve  my  own  soul 
alive,  I  must  cast  myself  into  the  breach.  I  re- 
membered how  He  said,  *  If  any  man  will  save  his 
life,  he  shall  lose  it,  and  if  he  will  lose  his  life 
for  my  sake  and  the  GospePs,  he  shall  find  it.' 
On  the  next  Sabbath  morning  I  called  my  officials 
into  the  study  and  told  them  that  I  was  greatly 
moved.  I  felt  that  something  ought  to  be  done 
and  done  at  once;  I  feared  that  perhaps  they 
would  not  like  it  and  that  the  congregation  might 
feel  like  resenting  it,  but  I  had  in  my  heart 
the  same  feeling  which  Luther  had  when  he  said, 
'Here  I  stand,  God  help  me,  I  can  do  no  other.' 
I  told  them  all  that  was  on  my  heart,  and  we  had 
a  time  of  great  heart  searching  and  agony  before 
God.  I  asked  them  to  spend  the  week  in  thought 
and  in  prayer,  and  on  the  next  Sabbath  morning 
as  we  gathered  the  atmosphere  seemed  to  be  sur- 
charged with  spiritual  conviction.  'I  want  you,' 
I  said,  'tt)  help  me  take  the  message  this  morning 
and  bring  it  to  the  thought  and  conscience  of  the 
people  for  immediate  action.'  " 

So,  my  friend  said,  when  he  had  given  his  mes- 
sage as  hot  with  yearning  as  he  knew  how  to 
give  it,  he  called  the  officials  to  the  front,  and,  in 
the  presence  of  the  congregation,  charged  them  to 
carry  the  message  of  the  Master  to  their  friends 
among  the  people.  *'It  was  such  an  hour  as  we 
had  never  witnessed  in  the  church.  Strong  men 
bowed  their  heads  upon  the  pews  before  them 


72  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

and  many  of  my  leaders  were  in  tears.  When  I 
gave  the  invitation  for  men  and  women  to  stand 
for  Christ  and  proclaim  their  choice  of  Him  as 
their  life  leader,  one  and  another  and  another 
responded  until  more  than  forty  men  and  women 
came  to  the  front,  and  clasping  my  hand,  made 
a  solemn  promise  to  be  true  to  God.  I  count  that,'* 
said  the  preacher,  *'the  greatest  hour  in  my  min- 
istry hitherto,  and,  if  I  am  ever  tempted  to  be 
unfaithful,  I  hope  I  shall  hear  those  words  'holy 
boldness'  ringing  in  my  ears,  and  that  I  may 
never  prove  recreant  to  the  call  of  my  Lord." 


Chapter  V 
CULTURE 


CHAPTER  V 

CULTURE 
A  LOAD  OR  A  LIFT 

May  my  tongue  falter  and  my  pen  forget  its 
cunning  before  I  say  or  write  one  word  that 
hinders  any  man  in  his  search  for  the  deepest  and 
broadest^ulture  of  which  his  nature  is  capable. 
True  culture  should  increase  our  capacity,  en- 
large our  ability  and  quicken  our  perceptions. 
When  properly  applied,  it  is  the  handmaid  of 
religion  as  well  as  the  husbandman  of  the  mind. 
But  is  it  possible  that  such  a  beneficent  thing 
may  be  throttled  in  its  purpose,  so  that  it  becomes 
a  source  of  spiritual  death  instead  of  life?  Here 
the  appeal  must  be  not  to  theory  but  to  fact.  Does 
anyone  doubt  that  German  Kultur  came  to  be 
a  bhght  upon  the  individual  and  the  world?  Ger- 
many was  unequaled  in  her  intellectual  attain- 
ments of  a  certain  kind,  but  the  effect  of  it  all 
on  her  scholars  in  the  atrophy  of  spiritual  vision 
and  power  will  ever  remain  as  an  indictment  of 
a  godless  culture  that  cannot  be  overlooked  or 
explained  away.  Are  we  not  right  then  in  asldng 
ourselves,  ''Is  the  culture  which  I  have  and  to 
which  I  aspire  strengthening  my  devotion  to  those 

75 


76  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

things  which  are  pure  and  lovely  and  of  good 
report?  Are  the  most  cultured  men  I  know  the 
most  devoted  to  the  highest  interest  of  humanity 
and  the  most  uncalculating  and  unselfish  in  the 
measure  of  their  service?"  Surely  there  can  be 
no  doubt  that  the  standard  of  unselfish  service  is 
the  one  by  which,  in  the  last  analysis,  the  great- 
ness of  men  will  be  determined.  There  has  been 
no  dissent  to  the  sublime  affirmation  of  the  Gali- 
lean Teacher — ^**I  ai!ite|^ng  you  as  he  that 
serveth,"  and  *'he  that  woSllfc||^chief  among  you, 
let  him  be  the  servant  of  all!^^k|^^HMuiapply 
this  standard,  the  record  of  cultur^?no^!ways 
pleasant  reading.  Emerson  made  his  literary 
bow  to  the  world  in  his  Harvard  Phi  Beta  Kappa 
oration  on  the  alienation  of  men  of  letters  from 
the  affairs  of  national  life. 

Like  wealth  and  power  of  any  sort,  culture  has 
its  insidious  temptations.  First  of  all,  it  is  com- 
pelled to  be  analytical  and  critical.  It  takes  things 
to  pieces.  Its  flowers  lose  their  perfume  in  the 
study  of  calyx  and  sepal.  \There  is  no  song  in 
the  nightingale 's  throat  when  the  scalpel  is  search- 
ing for  the  source  of  its  melody.  ^It  comes  to  the 
city  of  Man-Soul  as  most  of  our  railroads  come 
to  town,  through  the  purlieus  of  poverty  and 
waste.  Because  it  does  not  find  beauty  there,  it 
is  tempted  to  think  the  city  has  none.  Because  the 
city's  soul  is  not  in  the  street,  it  is  quite  inclined 
to  believe  that  it  has  none.    It  loves  to  say  it  is 


A  LOAD  OR  A  LIFT  77 

a  searcher  after  truth  for  truth's  sake,  and  is  im- 
patient with  the  pragmatic  test. 

What  is  truth  for  truth's  sake?  If  you  mean 
a  truth  that  is  sterile,  that  does  not  eventuate  in 
life,  then  it  is  an  impertinence  in  the  sight  of 
God  and  man  to  talk  of  that  kind  of  truth.  From 
the  standpoint  of  a  life  spent  in  association  with 
Greek  and  Roman  philosophers,  who  freely  en- 
couraged suicide  and  lived  lives  whose  abomina- 
tions smeUed  to  heave]^||fl|iPte  had  good  reason 
when  he  asked  of  ij^^Bltered  Man  before  him 
* '  What  yjgkaj^ij^m^^Q,  found  out^  ^s  any  man 
of  cultur^aeea^to  find  out — "For  this  cause 
was  I  born,  that  I  might  witness  to  the  truth. 
/  am  the  truth."  The  only  truth  that  counts  inj^ 
the  realm  of  morals  and  religion  is  felt  truth — 
truth  that  is  vital  and  imperative.  A  formal 
creed  is  only  the  skin  of  truth  stuffed.  It  is  as 
useless  as  a  last  year's  bird  nest  on  the  boughs 
of  time.  It  is  only  when  truth  becomes  incarnate 
that  the  world  bows  its  knee  to  it  and  accepts  it. 
That  was  what  happened  when  a  brown-frockedi 
monk  was  walking  up  the  holy  staircase  at  RomeJ 
and  when  the  heart  of  an  Oxford  don  wasi 
strangely  warmed  in  Aldersgate  Street. 

Another  temptation  to  which  culture  is 
especially  susceptible  is  pride.  It  is  fair  to  say 
that  those  who  most  reveal  it  are  those  whose 
culture  is  really  limited,  but,  alas,  there  are  so 
many   of   that   kind!    It   is    always    true    that 


78  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

knowledge  may  be  proud  that  it  knows  so  much, 
but  wisdom  will  be  humble  that  it  knows  so  little. 
There  was  a  never-to-be-forgotten  day  when  a 
freshman  in  another  college  strolled  into  the 
museum  at  Harvard.  It  was  the  opening  of  a 
fairyland  to  him.  Eager-eyed  he  was  gazing  at 
specimen  after  specimen  and  wishing  that  he  knew 
more  about  them,  when  a  sweet-faced  man,  whose 
smile  would  have  made  summer  in  the  Arctic,  was 
standing  at  his  side.  Captivated  by  the  man,  the 
freshman  heard  him  say,  '*  These  are  my  pets. 
May  I  tell  you  about  them"?"  He  lifted  a  trilobite 
and  told  the  ignorant  boy  how  that  fossil  was  old 
when  Pharaoh  build ed  the  pyramids  and  Attic 
poets  sang.  With  infinite  patience  he  answered 
questions  which  must  have  seemed  foolish.  When 
the  wonderful  man  was  interrupted  and  called 
away,  the  freshman  asked  a  guide,  ''Who  is  that 
man?"    "Don't  you  know — that  is  Agassiz!" 

It  is  always  true  that  a  little  learning  is  a  dan- 
gerous thing  and  most  of  us  with  all  our  culture 
have  yet  but  little  knowledge  compared  with  what 

I  is  before  us,  and  yet  we  are  proud.  Edison  has 
said,  ' '  No  man  knows  one  seven-billionth  part  of 

I  anything."  There  is  an  arrogance  of  ignorance 
which  we  greatly  condemn,  but  there  is  an  arro- 
gance of  culture  which  ought  with  greater  justice 
to  be  condemned,  because  the  cultured  man  ought 
to  know  better. 


A  LOAD  OR  A  LIFT  79 

Culture  is  tempted  to  interest  itself  in  the  form 
of  things.    It  needs  to  be  reminded 

**  'Tis  life  whereof  our  nerves  are  scant.*' 

It  is  more  life  and  fuller  which  is  the  need  of  the 
hour.  John  Stuart  Mill  was  the  greatest  thinking  ■ 
machine  in  England  in  the  last  century.  At  twelve 
years  of  age  he  knew  more  Greek  than  most  of  the 
professors  in  Oxford,  and  at  fourteen  the  greatest 
mathematicians  took  off  their  hats  to  him.  At  the 
morning  walk  with  his  father,  at  the  mature  age 
of  thirteen,  they  discussed  the  problem  of  Gib- 
bon *s  "Rise  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire." 
When  I  was  a  boy  in  college,  few  names  were  more 
quoted  in  cultured  circles  than  his,  but  I  have 
seldom  heard  his  name  mentioned  in  the  last 
twenty  years.  His  latest  historian  says  of  him, 
'  *  There  was  no  fire  under  his  boiler. ' '  His  culture 
was  aloof  and  academic.  He  had  no  thrill  of 
human  interest,  no  glow  of  conviction.  Toward 
the  world's  needs,  he  was  as  heartless  as  a  graven 
image.  When  asked  how  he  would  feel  if  the  prin- 
ciples he  advocated  were  universally  accepted,  he 
said,  '*!  would  not  feel."  He  was  the  consum- 
mate flower  of  the  culture  of  his  time,  but  it  was 
the  culture  of  the  dilettanti. 

Perhaps  no  two  men  of  the  same  age  better 
illustrate  the  difference  between  culture  and  ser- 
vice than  Erasmus  and  Luther.  Erasmus  was  the 
greatest  scholar  of  his  day.    There  were  none  to 


80  HEEAEDS  OF  A  PASSION 

challenge  his  supremacy.  He  thoroughly  agreed 
with  the  principles  of  Martin  Luther,  but  when 
Luther's  friends  asked  him  to  come  out  in  the 
open  and  stand  with  him  he  said,  ''Why  should 
I  lose  my  living  or  my  head?"  He  realized  all  the 
abominations  of  the  Church  of  Rome.  He  said 
that  instead  of  saying  their  prayers  the  monks 
were  eating  gingerbread  that  they  might  take 
more  kindly  to  their  beer,  but  he  left  Luther  to 
fight  alone  for  God  and  men.  If  he  had  only  stood 
with  the  little  monk  at  the  Diet  of  Worms  he  could 
have  changed  the  thought  of  half  the  world  and 
projected  himself  for  the  help  of  men  through 
untold  millenniums.  Luther  sighed  over  his  de- 
flection and  might  have  chanted  with  Browning  in 
his  Lost  Leader, 

*'Just  for  a  handful  of  silver  he  left  us, 
Just  for  a  riband  to  stick  on  his  coat." 

If  you  want  to  see  culture  as  a  load,  read 
Fronde's  ''Times  of  Erasmus  and  Luther."  If 
you  wish  to  see  culture  as  a  lift,  there  is  Henry 
Drummond,  the  scholar;  "Chinese"  Gordon,  the 
soldier, 

'Who  always  and  everywhere 
Gave  his  help  to  the  weak, 
His  sjmipathy   to  the  suffering, 
His  substance  to  the  poor, 
And  his  heart  to  G-od." 

There  is  Philhps  Brooks,  the  pre^icher,  and  Bor- 
den P.  Bowne,  the  greatest  philosopher  that 
America  has  produced  and  one  of  the  most  faith- 


A  LOAD  OR  A  LIFT  81 

ful,  eager-hearted  Christians  I  have  ever  known. 

Li  Conferences  and  Assemblies  and  Synods 
throughout  the  country,  I  have  had  ministers  by 
the  score  ask,  ''Why  is  it  that  with  deeper,  more 
scholarly  culture  and  training,  I  am  less  effective 
in  moving  men  to  God?"  The  answer  is  not  far 
to  seek — your  culture  has  become  a  load  instead 
of  a  lift.  While  you  have  been  busy  with  the  de- 
lights of  scholarship  the  fire  has  gone  out  upon 
the  altar.  Thus  so  many  of  the  prophets  of  God 
stand  shivering  around  the  altars  where  the  fires 
have  failed  and  are  as  impotent  as  were  the 
priests  of  Baal  to  call  down  the  fires  of  God  from 
the  ascenting  heavens. 

Knowledge  ought  to  be  power.  Culture,  if  it  is 
to  be  a  lift  and  not  a  load,  must  be  transmuted 
into  service  for  God  and  man.  When  the  culture 
of  the  mind  exceeds  the  culture  of  the  soul,  a 
man  is  educated  beyond  his  capacity.  He  is  doing 
too  much  business  for  his  capital.  It  is  a  prosti- 
tution of  talent  when  he  who  knows  the  most  does 
the  least.  It  might  be  well  for  the  best  of  us 
with  all  our  culture  to  lay  our  finger  on  our  lips 
and  listen  to  the  greatest  Teacher  of  all  the  ages, 
Son  of  Mary  and  Son  of  God,  who  says  to  His 
friends  in  words  which  the  world  will  never  allow 
to  be  discounted  or  to  perish, ' '  If  any  man  will  do 
my  will,  he  shall  know  of  the  doctrine." 


Chapter  VI 
THE  PASSION  OF  THE  PROPHETS 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  PASSION  OF  THE  PROPHETS 

No  one  can  look  at  Sargent's  picture  of  the 
Prophets  in  the  Boston  Public  Library  without 
feeling  a  tug  at  his  soul.  What  glorious  men  they 
were — ^laymen  all  of  them — gatherers  of  sycamore 
fruit,  cup  bearers  to  the  king,  but  whatever  else 
they  did,  one  great  absorbing  passion  for  the 
Israel  of  God  was  on  their  souls.  They  were  not 
only  forth-tellers  of  the  truth^  but  they  Kved  it 
out.  There  was  Israel  turning  from  God,  giving 
herself  up  to  idols,  and  they  were  sore  distressed. 
See  stem  old  Elijah,  the  greatest  of  them  all,  for 
whom  to  this  day  every  child  of  Abraham  sets  a 
chair  at  his  solemn  feast,  the  man  whom  they  say 
locked  up  by  his  prayers  the  cisterns  of  the 
heavens  and  carried  the  keys  of  them  for  three 
long  years  in  his  pocket !  How  shall  he  let  Israel 
and  its  king  go  on  to  their  destruction?  A  king  is 
seeking  him  but  he  will  not  temporize  his  message, 
''Art  thou  he  that  troubleth  Israel?'*  Elijah 
answered,  "Not  I,  but  you  and  your  father's 
house  have  wrought  the  overthrow  of  this  peo- 
ple. ' '  And  he  told  him  that  in  Naboth  's  vineyard, 
where  of  all  places  on  God's  green  earth  the  king 

85 


86  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

would  least  desire  to  meet  the  prophet  of  Jehovah. 
See  him  on  Carmel  calling  back  Israel  to  her  old- 
time  faith.  He  will  not  temporize  or  equivocate, 
stern  old  prophet  of  righteousness.  He  will  not 
let  things  drift.  It  is  a  time  of  decision.  ''Choose 
ye  this  day  whom  you  will  serve ;  if  God  be  God, 
serve  Him,  and  if  Baal,  serve  him."  More  of  the 
Saviour's  challenge — decide  something,  don^t 
drift !  And  then  that  a  race  to  Jezreel — a  king  in 
a  chariot  bested  by  a  prophet  on  foot,  and  the 
prophet  oversped  by  the  rain  drops  of  the  mercy 
of  God!  Small  wonder  that  when  John  the  Bap- 
tist came,  they  said  it  was  Elijah,  and  when  Jesus 
came  they  said  it  was  the  spirit  of  Elijah  and  the 
thunderous  voice  of  John  the  Baptist  rolled  into 
one. 

And  here  is  Isaiah,  perhaps  the  most  gifted  of 
all  the  prophets,  a  man  of  great  natural  endow- 
ments, intensified  and  consecrated  to  the  loftiest 
ends  by  his  self-surrender  to  God.  He  had  the 
intellectual  grasp  of  a  great  statesman  and  the 
fervid  imagination  of  a  great  poet.  He  was  a 
seer  who  could  see.  How  his  yearning  soul  por- 
trayed the  love  of  God  and  His  righteous  indig- 
nation! What  irony,  what  ridicule,  what  ch^- 
lenge  to  heights  of  spiritual  experience!  How 
utterly  all  his  gifts  were  mastered  as  he  sought  to 
win  Israel  back  to  God.  His  were  the  words  that 
Jesus  loved  to  quote,  and  no  prophetic  words  are 
oftener  on  the  lips  of  preachers  today  than  the 


THE  PASSION  OF  THE  PROPHETS      87 

words  of  this  marvelous  prophet.  He  is  the  great 
evangelist,  the  proclaimer  of  the  good  things. 
**Ho,  everyone  that  thirsteth  oome  ye  to  the 
waters,  buy  wine  and  milk  without  money  and 
without  price."  And  those  Messianic  prophecies 
— *'He  was  wounded  for  our  transgressions;  the 
chastisement  of  our  peace  was  laid  upon  him,  and 
by  his  stripes  are  we  healed. ' '  May  my  soul  stand 
in  holy  wonder  before  such  a  flaming  heart  and 
fiery  tongue  until  I  myself  have  caught  the  blaze 
of  iti 

Of  Jeremiah  it  was  an  English  preacher  who 
said,  **  However  many  Isaiahs  there  may  have 
been,  I  am  glad  there  was  only  one  Jeremiah." 
He  seems  to  think  that  one  weeping  prophet  and 
one  set  of  jeremiads  was  enough,  but  would  it  not 
tend  toward  the  multiplication  of  good  shepherds 
who  would  give  their  lives  for  the  sheep  if  there 
were  many  who  could  come  to  say  '*0  that  my 
head  were  waters  and  mine  eyes  a  fountain  of 
tears  that  I  might  weep  day  and  night  for  the 
slain  of  the  daughter  of  my  people." 

What  shall  I  say  more  for  the  time  would  fail 
me  to  tell  Daniel  and  Nahum  and  Amos,  gatherer 
of  sycamore  fruit,  and  Jonah,  and  Habakkuk, 
whose  prayer,  Webster  said,  was  the  most  sub- 
lime thing  in  literature,  and  all  the  long  list  of  the 
prophets  down  to  Malachi,  who  with  a  challenge 
which  bums  in  our  soul,  cries,  ''Will  a  man  rob 
God,"  and  all  the  yearning  of  his  soul  condensed 


88  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

into  one  glorious  prophecy  at  which  the  heart  of 
God's  people  will  bound  for  joy  until  they  see  the 
prophet  himself  in  the  land  of  his  fruition,  '  *  Then 
they  that  feared  the  Lord  spake  often  one  to 
another  and  the  Lord  harkened  and  heard  it,  and 
a  book  of  remembrance  was  written  before  him 
for  them  that  feared  the  Lord  and  that  thought 
upon  His  name,  and  they  shall  be  mine,  saith  the 
Lord  of  Hosts,  in  that  day  when  I  make  up  my 
jewels  and  I  will  spare  them  as  a  man  spareth 
his  own  son  that  serveth  him.'* 


Chapter  VII 
THE  PASSION  OF  GREAT  EVANGELISTS 


CHAPTER  Vn 

THE  PASSION  OP  THE  GREAT  EVAN-GBLISTS 

Where  shall  we  begin  the  story  of  evangelism? 
Who  were  the  great  evangelists?  We  can  only 
touch  upon  one  here  and  there,  for  their  number 
is  legion.  Prophets,  apostles,  the  church  fathers, 
the  reformers  themselves  were  all  what  they  were 
because  of  the  great  evangel  which  trembled  upon 
their  lips.  Perhaps  we  cannot  do  better  than  to 
mention  first  that  wonderful  evangelist,  John 
Bunyan.  How  we  love  him!  How  we  have 
marched  with  him  to  the  city  of  the  great  King, 
the  new  Jerusalem!  He  has  led  us  all  the  way 
into  the  green  pastures  by  the  delectable  moun- 
tains, past  the  slough  of  despond,  and  all  the  won- 
derful path  until  we  come  in  sight  of  the  City  of 
the  Saved.  All  this  he  crowded  into  a  narrow 
cell  in  Bedford  Jail.  It  was  there  he  heard  sweet 
angels  singing  lauds  for  him,  and  because  of  what 
happened  there,  he  would  be  willing  to  go  back  and 
stay  "until  the  moss  grows  over  my  eyebrows 
rather  than  in  anywise  to  deny  my  Lord.'*  Look 
at  his  wonderful  characters  and  the  names  they 
bear — Mr.  Great  Heart,  Christian,  Faithful,  and 
Mr.  Valiant-f  or-Truth.    How  many  souls  has  John 

91 


92  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

Bunyan  led  out  of  the  City  of  Destruction?  He 
could  not  have  led  others  if  he  had  not  gone  that 
way  himself.  It  is  out  of  his  own  great  expe- 
rience that  he  is  speaking,  and  no  man  can  lead 
others  unless  he  himself  is  led  of  God.  John 
Bunyan  had  known  the  sinful  life,  but  with  what 
fulness  and  depth  he  came  to  know  his  Saviour  is 
found  in  the  sweet  story  of  Grace  Abounding. 
May  we  all  stand  at  last  with  Mr.  Valiant-for- 
Truth  and  see  the  heavens  filled  with  the  chariots 
of  God  and  hear  the  trumpets  sound  for  us  on 
the  farther  shore. 

Next  we  turn  for  a  moment  to  the  man  who 
traveled  more  miles  to  bring  the  gospel  to  the 
lost,  as  Birrell  says,  ''than  any  man  who  ever 
bestrode  a  beast^';  a  man  whose  devotion  was 
marvelous  from  the  days  when  he  was  a  student 
in  Lincoln  College  in  Oxford,  but  who  says  that 
all  that  availed  him  nothing  until  that  day  which 
Christendom  will  never  allow  to  pass  out  of  its 
sight,  when  his  heart  was  "strangely  warmed" 
and  he  went  out  to  do  for  England  more  than  was 
done  by  the  armies  and  navies  of  England  in  the 
whole  length  of  his  life.  What  courage  and  what 
toil!  Ease  and  he  had  parted  company,  and  as 
for  money,  he  lived  upon  a  pittance  and  gave 
away  more  than  $200,000.  Abused  and  maligned 
in  his  time,  he  could  say,  '*!  leave  my  reputation 
where  I  leave  my  soul — in  the  hands  of  God.** 
He  said  to  his  brother  Charles,  ''When  I  devoted 


PASSION  OF  GREAT  EVANGELISTS      93 

to  God  my  ease,  my  time,  my  labor,  did  I  exempt 
my  reputation."  So  lie  traveled  225,000  miles 
and  preached  2,400  sermons,  and,  amid  misrepre- 
sentation and  abuse,  never  knowing  the  delights 
of  love  at  home,  subject  to  incessant  attacks  of 
the  mob,  the  pulpit  and  the  press,  he  did  not  abate 
a  jot  of  heart  or  hope  until  he  had  reached  the  age 
of  eighty-eight  and  ceased  at  once  to  labor  and 
to  live.  Canon  Farrar  says,  "Overwhelming 
evidence  exists  to  show  that  the  church  and  peo- 
ple of  England  in  his  day  were  dull,  vapid  and 
soulless  and  the  preaching  was  careless,  the  land 
steeped  in  immorality.  To  Wesley  was  granted 
the  task  for  which  he  was  set  apart  by  enviable 
consecration — ^the  task  which  even  an  archangel 
might  have  envied  him,  of  awakening  a  mighty 
revival  of  religious  life  in  those  dead  pulpits  in 
that  slumbering  church  and  moribund  society. 
His  was  the  religious  sincerity  which  not  only 
formed  the  Wesley  Community  but,  working 
through  the  heart  of  the  very  church  which  had 
despised  him,  he  flashed  fire  into  her  whitening 
embers.  It  was  he  who  discovered  that  lost  secret 
of  Christianity — the  compulsion  of  human  souls. 
He  was  the  voice  that  cried  over  the  valley  of  dry 
bones,  '  Come  from  the  four  winds,  oh  spirit,  and 
breathe  upon  the  slain  that  they  may  live.'  "  In 
Westminster  Abbey,  that  great  temple  of  silence 
and  reconciliation,  one  may  read  three  of  his 
great  sayings :  one  fuU  of  holy  knowledge,  *'I  look 


94  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

on  all  the  world  as  my  parish";  another  full  of 
triumphant  confidence, '  *  God  buries  His  workmen 
but  His  work  goes  on";  the  third,  his  cry  in  age 
and  feebleness  extreme,  the  best  of  all  is,  **  God 
is  with  us." 

In  the  long  list  of  great  evangelists,  no  name 
stands  out  clearer  in  the  light  of  an  absorbing 
passion  than  that  of  Whitefield.  To  him  two  con- 
tinents acknowledge  their  debt  and  keep  green 
the  traditions  of  his  marvelous  power.  Most  of 
the  leaders  and  charmers  of  men  have  come  to 
their  service  from  under  the  low  lintels  of  the 
poor,  and  Whitefield  was  no  exception.  Uniting 
with  Wesley  to  form  the  Holy  Club  at  Oxford,  he 
was  at  first  morbid  in  his  spiritual  earnestness. 
He  wore  patched  clothing,  ate  coarse  food,  prayed 
under  the  trees  far  into  the  winter  nights  in  such 
agony  of  soul  that  the  sweat  ran  down  his  face. 
At  last  he  laid  hold  on  God  by  simple  faith.  He 
had  traveled  his  own  via  dolorosa  and  through 
pain  he  came  to  peace ;  thereby  he  was  enabled  to 
help  others  who  journey  alone  in  the  cypress  path. 

Ordained  at  twenty-two,  he  began  to  preach 
immediately  with  tremendous  effect.  Probably 
no  man  since  the  days  of  Paul  excelled  him  in 
sacred  eloquence.  Said  John  Newton,  ''If  you 
ask  me  who  is  the  second  preacher  in  the  world,  I 
do  not  know;  but  if  you  ask  me  who  is  the  first, 
there  can  be  but  one  answer." 

Franklin  went  to  hear  him  plead  for  his  orphan 


PASSION  OF  GREAT  EVANGELISTS      95 

school  in  Georgia,  but  resolved  he  would  give 
nothing.  After  listening  a  little,  he  decided  to 
give  his  coppers,  then  his  silver  and  then  his  gold, 
and  emptied  his  pockets  into  it  when  the  plate 
was  passed.  Hopkinson  left  his  money  at  home 
purposely,  but  was  moved  to  borrow  of  his  neigh- 
bors. Garrick  said  he  could  repeat  the  word 
*' Mesopotamia"  so  that  it  moved  him  to  tears. 

But  after  all  has  been  said  about  his  eloquence, 
his  power  with  men  depended  most  upon  the  pas- 
sion of  his  soul  which  absorbed  every  lesser  am- 
bition and  used  every  God-given  power  to  lead 
men  to  the  personal  choice  of  Jesus  Christ  as 
Saviour  and  Lord.  He  was  a  kindred  spirit  with 
Jonathan  Edwards  in  this  regard  and  together 
they  led  the  Great  Awakening  of  our  young  Re- 
public. No  man  was  more  untiring  in  devotion 
than  he.  At  one  time  he  writes,  *'Lord  when  thou 
seest  me  in  danger  of  nestling  down  put  a  thorn 
in  tender  pity  into  my  nest,'^  and  again,  "I  am 
determined  to  go  on  until  I  drop,  to  die  fighting 
though  it  be  on  my  stumps." 

When  nations  forget  their  dependence  upon 
Him  and  personal  allegiance  is  lightly  held  and 
the  individual  conscience  is  benumbed,  when  form 
triumphs  over  spirit,  and  worship  degenerates 
into  heartless  ceremonials,  God  sends  his  mes- 
sengers of  flame.  So  came  the  old  prophets  to 
Israel;  so  came  Savonarola  to  Italy;  Luther  to 
Germany;  Knox  to  Scotland j  Wesley  to  England, 


96  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

Edwards  and  Whitefield  to  America.  In  such 
manner  God  in  all  ages  has  called  back  His  people 
from  apostasy. 

When  Whitefield  preached  in  Boston,  the  city- 
was  at  white  heat.  Twenty  thousand  heard  him 
in  Philadelphia,  and  thirty  thousand  crowded  Bos- 
ton Common  to  listen  to  him.  Mr.  Cooper,  pastor 
in  Boston,  said,  **  Under  Whitefield 's  preaching 
more  people  came  to  me  in  one  week  in  deep 
concern  about  their  souls  than  in  the  whole 
twenty-four  years  of  my  ministry."  Mr.  Prince, 
another  pastor,  said  in  substance  the  same  thing. 
Mr.  Webb  said  about  1,000  in  deep  conviction 
came  to  him  in  three  months.  The  pastors  unite 
in  saying  the  same  spirit  prevailed  for  more  than 
a  year  and  a  half  after  Whitefield  had  gone. 

Speaking  of  his  passion.  Dr.  Parsons  said  of 
him,  in  a  sermon  preached  on  the  day  of  his  death : 
**We  were  convinced  that  he  believed  the  message 
he  brought  to  be  of  the  last  importance. '  ^  On  the 
marble  cenotaph  above  his  dust  at  Newburyport 
these  words  are  carved:  **As  a  soldier  of  the 
Cross,  humble,  devout,  ardent,  he  put  on  the  whole 
armor  of  God,  preferring  the  honor  of  Christ  to 
his  own  interest,  repose,  reputation  or  life.*'  In 
thirty-four  years  he  crossed  the  Atlantic  thirteen 
times  and  preached  18,000  sermons.  For  his 
seal  he  had  a  lambent  flame  and  under  it  the 
motto,  "Let  us  seek  heaven." 

In  his  time,  Whitefield,  like  Wesley,  was  ac- 


PASSION  OF  GREAT  EVANGELISTS      97 

cused  of  almost  every  crime.  As  Dr.  Squintum, 
he  was  caricatured  by  Foot,  the  actor,  from  one 
end  of  Great  Britain  to  the  other,  even  after  he 
was  in  his  grave.  He  was  called  the  clerical  pick- 
pocket, and  accused  of  appropriating  his  great 
collections  to  himself,  but  those  accusations  only 
live  in  history  to  fasten  obloquy  upon  those  who 
made  them.    In  Cowper^s  words, 

"He  loved  the  world  that  hated  him.    The  tear 
That  dropped  upon  his  Bible  was  sincere. 
Assailed  by  scandal  and  the  tongue  of  strife 
His  only  answer  was  a  blameless  life." 

The  record  of  his  last  hours  at  Newburyport  is 
thrilling  beyond  words  to  tell.  He  is  preaching 
his  last  sermon.  His  subject  is  "Faith  and 
Works."  With  far  carrying  tones  he  cries, 
"Works,  Works,  a  man  get  to  heaven  by  Works! 
I  would  as  soon  think  of  climbing  to  the  moon  on 
a  rope  of  sand ! ' '  But  his  voice  begins  to  fail,  ' '  I 
go, ' '  he  said, ' '  to  my  everlasting  rest.  My  sun  has 
risen,  shone,  and  is  setting.  Nay,  it  is  about  to 
rise  and  shine  forever.  I  have  not  lived  in  vain, 
and  though  I  could  live  to  preach  Christ  a  thou- 
sand years,  I  die  to  be  with  Him,  which  to  me  is  far 
better. '  ^  He  was  to  preach  that  night,  but  he  felt 
he  could  not.  He  took  his  candle  to  go  up  to  bed, 
but  midway  on  the  outside  stairs  he  paused  with 
his  candle  in  his  hand.  Answering  the  importu- 
nity of  the  people,  he  spoke  with  the  passion  of 
his  blessed  Lord  until  the  candle  burned  down  to 


98  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

its  socket  and  went  out.  Wonld  that  a  picture  of 
that  scene  at  Newburyport  might  hang  in  every 
preacher's  study  in  America!  He  went  up  to  his 
room  and  to  an  agonizing  night,  then 

"Just  as  the  sun  in  all  his  state 
Illumined  the  eastern  skies 
He  passed  through  glory's  morning  gate 
And  walked  in  Paradise." 

Whitefield  was  no  organizer  like  Wesley.  He  was 
the  voice  of  one  crying  in  the  wilderness,  **  Pre- 
pare ye  the  way  of  the  Lord, ' '  and  America  owes 
him  a  debt  which  it  does  not  fully  appreciate  and 
which  it  can  never  repay. 

Time  would  fail  me  to  tell  of  Fox  and  Tennant 
and  Brainerd ;  of  Finney,  losing  his  strength  that 
he  might  gain  his  power;  of  Moody  saying, 
**  There  shall  be  one  man  completely  consecrated 
to  show  the  world  what  God  can  do  with  a  soul 
entirely  given  up  to  His  service;  and  scores  of 
men,  some  of  whom  have  finished  their  evangel  in 
victory,  and  others  who  still  move  the  people  up 
to  God,  both  in  the  pulpit  and  out  of  it.  They 
are  the  heralds  of  a  passion  which  stopped  not  at 
the  Cross,  and  they  shall  share  here  and  hereafter 
the  glory  and  benediction  of  their  Lord." 


Chapter  VIII 
THE  TEACHER'S  PASSION 


CHAPTER  Vni 

THE  teacher's  PASSION 

There  is  one  miracle  of  grace  by  which  a  wan- 
dering soul  comes  back  to  God.  There  is  another 
by  which  a  soul  itself  touched  with  infinite  love 
feels  an  absorbing  passion  to  go  after  another 
who,  Uke  itself,  had  gone  astray.  There  is  no 
place  where  one  who  has  felt  this  high  commission 
can  hope  to  win  greater  trophies  than  in  the  Sun- 
day School.  Birrell  says  of  John  Wesley  that 
**he  was  out  of  breath  pursuing  souls."  If  only 
the  same  panting  desire  might  be  born  in  the  heart 
of  every  Sunday  School  teacher! 

Thompson  pictures,  in  ''The  Hound  of 
Heaven,"  God  out  after  the  soul;  pursuing  it  up 
and  down  the  universe.  The  hunted  one  flees,  as 
men  so  constantly  flee,  from  the  highest  and  seeks 
refuge  in  every  human  thing  that  could  be  called  at 
all  good,  but  the  point  of  the  poem  is  that  the  good 
must  never  hide  men  from  the  best.  So  the  soul 
is  never  allowed  to  rest  in  lower  things ;  just  as 
the  soul  would  nestle  in  some  new  covert,  she  is 
turned  from  it  by  the  imperious  best  of  all  that 
claims  her  for  its  own. 

Now  in  the  teacher's  life  there  are  many  oppor- 

101 


102  HEEALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

tunities  to  advance  the  good,  to  develop  intelleo- 
tual  taste,  to  encourage  the  scholar's  thirst  for 
learning,  but  none  of  these  must  stand  in  the  way 
of  the  one  thing  for  which  the  teacher  is  called  tc 
his  high  eminence.  Nor  literature,  nor  ideals  of 
any  sort  can  take  the  place  of  the  one  ideal — the 
perfect  life  in  Christ  Jesus.  So  the  Sunday 
School  of  itself  is  not  an  end;  teaching  of  itself 
is  not  an  end.  The  result  of  the  Sunday  School 
is  the  production  of  life  and  character,  and  the 
end  of  teaching  is  that  Christ  may  be  formed  in 
each  scholar,  the  hope  of  glory. 

In  order  to  teach  such  lessons,  it  goes  without 
saying  that  one  must  have  experience  in  the  thing 
he  teaches,  so  that  no  one  may  turn  upon  him  and 
say,  ''Sayest  thou  this  thing  of  thyself  or  did 
another  tell  it  thee  of  me!"  Has  he  first  hand 
information?  Does  he  speak  out  of  a  rich  and 
full  experience,  which  has  been  wrought  in  him 
by  holy  ventures  and  has  entered  through  the 
travail  of  his  soul  into  the  substance  of  his  life? 
To  a  heart  which  has  such  an  experience,  what  a 
challenge  presents  itself!  Twenty-seven  millions 
of  young  people  in  this  country  who  are  not  in  the 
Sunday  School  and  almost  as  many  millions  more 
already  within  its  reach ! 

Of  old  one  crusade  followed  another.  That  the 
sepulchre  of  Jesus  might  be  won  from  the  Sara- 
cen, Peter  the  Hermit  cried  *'God  wills  it,"  and 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  men  marched  on  the 


THE  TEACHER'S  PASSION  103 

first  crusade.  Fifty  years  later  a  million  and  a 
quarter  set  out  for  Jerusalem,  no  one  of  wliom 
saw  the  Holy  Land.  So  one  crusade  followed 
another,  and  little  enough  resulted  from  them. 
Perhaps  the  saddest  of  all  crusades  was  the  Chil- 
dren's Crusade  in  1212.  An  army  of  thirty  thou- 
sand French  children,  unarmed,  led  by  a  boy 
nwned  Stephen,  set  out  for  the  Holy  Land  by  way 
oc  Marseilles,  and  a  similar  army  of  German 
ciildren  marched  over  the  Alps  and  came  to  the 
]y^editerranean.  They  thought  the  sea  would  di- 
v.de  for  them  and  they  would  pass  over  to  the 
Holy  Land  in  safety.  Most  of  them  perished  on 
tie  march,  or  were  lost  at  sea,  or  were  sold  into 
s'avery. 

Now  the  time  has  come  for  a  crusade  for  the 
ciildren.  A  challenge  of  unspeakable  importance 
rists  upon  the  heart  of  the  church.  Shall  we  be 
a^le  to  win  these  millions  to  the  service  of  the 
Kaster?  You  may  rear  buildings,  but  the  torch 
0*  the  incendiary  may  consume  them  or  the  temp- 
eit  may  overthrow  them,  but  when  we  put  our 
tmch  upon  the  plastic  soul  of  youth,  it  will  remain 
tiere  when  the  wax  has  changed  to  adamant.  We 
nust  not  bungle  our  work.  We  see  men  and 
•vomen  who  were  the  subject  of  malpractice  in 
tleir  youth  by  careless  or  ignorant  servant  or 
piysician.  They  will  walk  the  path  of  life  to  the 
g'ave  and  every  step  they  will  go  with  pain.  Life's 
fpctions  instead  of  being  a  joy  have  become  an 


104  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

agony.  Sad  as  is  that  picture,  it  is  not  for  a 
moment  to  be  compared  with  the  work  of  one  who 
bungles  in  the  forming  and  transforming  of  the 
soul,  who  brings  only  human  diagnosis  and  rem- 
edy in  the  place  of  the  wisdom  and  power  of  God. 
Every  teacher  must  realize  that  her  students  sre 
looking  not  simply  into  her  face  but  into  her  soil, 
that  the  thing  she  is  is  greater  than  the  scierce 
she  teaches.  Garfield  said  if  he  could  sit  on  oae 
end  of  a  log  aud  have  Mark  Hopkins,  ,Presid€nt 
of  Williams  College,  on  the  other,  it  would  be  ill 
the  college  he  required. 

Here  as  nowhere  else  comes  the  gospel  of  .he 
personal  touch.  I  cannot  bear  to  think  that  he 
soul  of  a  child  should  be  either  mishandled  or 
neglected.  That  thrilling  story  of  human  expe- 
rience, ''Twice  Bom  Men,"  was  called  in  Englaid 
''Broken  Earthenware."  I  do  not  want  the  far 
vase  of  life  broken.  Thank  God  it  sometines 
happens  that  a  broken  vase  may  be  mended  >y 
His  grace  so  that  it  can  hold  the  water  of  life,  hit 
let  me  protect  and  surround  the  vase  so  thai  it 
may  not  be  shattered.  It  is  a  sad  comment  on  h.e 
passion  and  the  efficiency  of  our  teaching  foce 
that  one  out  of  every  five  who  come  to  the  Suncay 
School  is  won  to  Christ  in  the  School,  one  afer 
they  leave  the  School,  and  three  are  not  won  at 
all.  It  is  time  we  taught  our  children  that  tley 
are  never  too  young  to  surrender  their  hearts  to 
Jesus  Christ.    It  is  time  our  teachers  felt  tiat 


THE  TEACHER'S  PASSION  105 

their  work  has  been  in  the  most  important  part 
failure,  unless  by  personal  experience  their  mem- 
bers are  coming  to  know  Him  whom  to  know 
aright  is  life  eternal. 


Chapter  IX 
THE  PASSION  OF  THE  CHURCH 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE  PASSION   OF  THE   CHURCH 

If  one  were  asked  what  should  be  the  passion  of 
the  church,  there  could  be  but  one  answer  from 
progressive  or  conservative,  and  that  would  be 
"to  serve  the  world."  The  Master's  thrilling 
challenge  would  rise  to  our  lips,  "Ye  are  the  light 
of  the  world,  ye  are  the  salt  of  the  earth."  The 
church  ought  not  to  be  divided  into  two  camps 
when  it  comes  to  the  application  of  this  great 
principle.  At  heart,  we  believe,  the  Church  is 
really  one,  though  it  has  often  happened  that,  as 
in  the  old  story,  men  looking  at  different  sides  of 
the  same  shield  have  called  it  silver  or  gold  and 
have  fallen  to  blows  over  their  differences,  when 
if  each  had  taken  the  viewpoint  of  the  other,  their 
differences  would  have  disappeared.  May  we 
venture  an  irenic  word  with  the  hope  that  it  may 
serve  in  the  end  to  make  matters  a  little  clearer 
and  to  unite  for  a  common  purpose  forces  which 
have  seemed  at  times  to  be  arrayed  against  each 
other? 

A  little  careful  thought  will  show  that  there  is 
no  antagonism  between  a  personal  and  a  social 
gospel.    It  is  no  doubt  true  that  men  have  been 

109 


110  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

slow  to  realize  that  iu  addition  to  the  burden 
which  rests  upon  them  from  a  sense  of  personal 
wrong-doing,  they  are  also  face  to  face  with 
corporate  iniquities  and  national  selfishness  and 
organized  brute  force,  and  that  somebody  is  to 
blame  for  it.  "We  are  all  diseased  and  with  our 
surfeiting  and  wanton  waste  have  brought  our- 
selves into  a  burning  fever,  and  we  must  bleed  for 
it."  It  is  doubtless  true  that  a  conscience  awak- 
ened to  responsibility  in  social  guilt  will  soon 
focus  itself  upon  the  more  immediate  circle  of  life 
about  its  possessor  and  bring  to  sight  the  hideous 
consequences  of  his  own  self-seeking,  unfairness, 
indulgence  and  distrust.  But  it  is  also  true  that 
in  most  cases,  the  conscience  does  not  become 
awakened  to  a  sense  of  social  guilt  until  it  has 
become  sensitive  by  a*  personal  touch  with  Him 
who  is  the  illumination  of  the  soul.  We  do  not 
come  to  love  God  through  love  to  men,  but  we 
come  to  love  men  through  love  to  God,  and  then 
the  two  are  seen  to  be  in  essence  one. 

The  great  task  which  the  church  has  is  to  bring 
men  first  to  loyalty  to  Jesus  Christ  as  Saviour  and 
Lord;  from  that  will  flow  the  second  loyalty  to 
God's  world,  to  do  justly,  to  love  mercy  and  to 
walk  humbly  with  Him,  and  with  that  will  go  the 
passion  to  spend  and  to  be  spent  for  those  for 
whom  Christ  thought  it  not  beneath  Him  to  go 
himself  to  the  cross,  and  who  said,  '*If  any  mar 
will  come  after  me,  let  him  deny  himself  and  tak'* 


THE  PASSION  OF  THE  CHURCH     111 

up  his  cross  daily  and  follow  me."    There  is  a 
third  loyalty  to  which   our  attention  is  called, 
namely,  loyalty  to  the  Church,  to  prayer,  the  study 
of  the  Bible,  the  worship  of  God's  house,  the  fel- 
lowship which  comes  with  a  life  of  love.    No  one 
will  accuse  Henry  Sloane  Coffin  of  Union  Theolog- 
ical Seminary  with  not  having  the  modern  view- 
point.    He  says :  *' Religion  is  not  primarily  some- 
thing useful,  but  something  fruitful.    It  is  not  a 
means  of  improving  mankind  alongside  of  other, 
means,  such  as  education,  art,  politics  and  moral- 1 
ity ;  it  is  the  parent  of  them  all — their  fountain  of  \ 
life.    It  is  not  one  among  several  factors  cultivat- 
ing the  soil  of  humanity,  it  is  the  source  of  its  fer- 
tility.   We  are  busy  today  directing  the  flow  of 
Christian  motives  into  many  trenches  to  irrigate 
tracts  of  life  which  hitherto  have  been  desert. 
And  the  church  must  stand  then,  through  its  min- 
istry, not  simply  as  a  mere  instructor  imparting 
facts;  the  pulpit  stands  for  the  application  of 
truth  to  create  character.     The  minister  preaches 
not  to  make  men  wise  about  books,  or  scientific  dis- 
coveries, but  to  give  them  the  power  and  grace  of 
an  endless  life.     The  final  test  in  preaching  does 
not  then  lie  in  the  fact  imparted,  but  in  the  use  of 
any  fact  to  create  an  ennobled  life."    Dr.  Crocker 
has  well  said,  ''When  the  teacher  has  set  a  fact  in 
the  mind,  like  a  brick  in  the  wall,  he  has  practically 
finished  his  work,  but  the  preacher  must  plant 
that  fact  in  the  soil  of  the  soul  to  grow  as  the  seed 


112  HERAiDS  OF  A  PASSION 

of  a  new  life. "  It  is  true  that  the  great  need  of 
the  time  is  a  social  conscience,  but  what  is  a  social 
conscience'?  Is  it  something  concerned  only  with 
hours  and  wages  and  profits  and  conveniences? 
We  certainly  need  a  corporate  conscience,  so  that 
we  will  not  permit  corporations  to  do  what  indi- 
viduals have  no  right  to  do.  But  the  social  con- 
science that  we  need  is  one  that  shall  concern 
itself  primarily  with  those  social  duties  and  obli- 
gations out  of  which  grow  a  noble  life — a  con- 
science about  prayer  and  worship  and  Christian 
nurture,  and  not  a  social  conscience  that  only 
concerns  itself  in  a  fair  division  of  things.  The 
stability  of  society  is  not  dependent  primarily  on 
industrial  conditions  but  on  religious  duties  and 
spiritual  ideals. 

Dr.  Roberts  truly  says,  "There  are  such  things 
as  social  or  collective  sins,  but  conscience  does  not 
deal  with  them  on  that  plane.  Sin  is  an  intensely 
individual  thing  and  the  man  who  has  had  a  con- 
troversy with  his  conscience  knows  that  it  is  the 
ambassador  within  him,  not  of  a  certain  social 
order,  but  of  the  moral  order  of  the  whole  uni- 
verse. It  is  not  the  mere  reverberation  in  a  man's 
soul  of  a  social  order  evolved  by  way  of  a  natural 
selection;  conscience  is  native,  elemental,  primi- 
tive. It  is  impossible  to  get  behind  the  beginning 
of  it.  The  thing  which  invests  wrong  with  wrong- 
nees,  and  right  with  rightness  and  speaks  in  ^he 


THE  PASSION  OF  THE  CHURCH    113 

imperative  mood  is  an  indigenous  thing,  ante- 
cedent to  the  most  primitive  society." 

Roger  Babson  affirms:  "Religion  is  both  the 
anchor  and  the  rudder  of  prosperity.  The  real 
security  of  the  nation  is  not  its  militia,  but  its 
religion.  The  real  protectors  of  our  homes  are 
not  the  policemen  but  rather  the  preachers.  Only 
as  religion  saves  the  world,  can  we  save  ourselves. 
A  religious  spirit  makes  better  employers,  better 
workers,  and  a  better  public  spirit  with  which  to 
deal.  Furthermore,  without  such  a  religious 
spirit,  all  legislative,  cooperative  and  other  plans 
are  of  no  avail.  Religion  is  to  the  world  what  a 
spring  is  to  a  watch,  and  the  sooner  it  is  generally 
recognized  the  more  people  will  be  healthy,  happy 
and  prosperous."  This  man  of  business  makes 
bold  to  say  that  the  three  things  which  the  busi- 
ness world,  the  world  of  labor  and  of  capital  need 
are  not  the  nostrums  of  socialism  but  spiritual 
power,  faith  and  prayer.  We  hear,  and  properly, 
a  very  great  deal  about  the  material  form  in  which 
Christianity  should  express  itself,  but  are  we  not 
in  danger  of  putting  so  much  emphasis  on  works 
that  we  forget  the  source  of  conduct?  If  we  are 
to  have  fruit,  must  we  not  realize  that  fruitage 
depends  upon  rootage?  What  will  the  hand  do 
if  the  heart  ceases  to  beat  ?  If  we  have  no  wealth 
of  soul  to  give,  of  what  use  will  mechanics  be? 

One  of  the  most  illuminating  of  modern  writers 
has  said,  "The  most  urgent  demand  is  not  for 


114  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

service,  but  for  spirituality.  A  soul  fed  from  on 
high  will  certainly  bow  down  and  lift  the  lowly,  but 
a  generation  that  has  lost  faith  in  God  and  ceased 
to  love  Jesus  will  not  serve  humanity.'^  The  gos- 
pel of  Jesus  was  nothing  more  nor  less  than  the 
gospel  of  the  inner  life.  His  whole  inaugural,  the 
declaration  of  His  purpose  in  the  world  could  be 
condensed  into  a  single  sentence, '  *  I  am  come  that 
they  might  have  life  and  that  they  might  have  it 
more  abundantly. '  *  The  beatitudes  are  not  bless- 
ings upon  belief,  they  even  go  deeper  than  conduct 
and  service;  they  go  down  to  the  roots  of  life. 
What  are  His  parables — ^nothing  more  nor  less 
than  pictures  of  life ;  the  leaven,  the  mustard  seed, 
the  wise  virgin,  the  used  talents,  the  good  Samari- 
tan. The  abundance  of  the  soul  life  is  the  thing 
which  He  came  to  bring,  and  so  far  as  Jesus  Him- 
self was  concerned,  it  was  not  His  teachings — ■ 
though  they  were  the  most  sublime  ever  uttered 
• — ^but  the  spirit  of  His  life.  When  He  examined 
Peter  for  his  ordination.  He  did  not  ask  him  ques- 
tions of  creed  or  ethics,  or  doctrines  of  any  sort; 
the  only  question  which  He  asked,  and  that  He 
repeated  again  and  again,  was  "Lovest  thou  me?" 
It  was  the  things  that  Jesus  stood  for  that  won 
the  disciples  at  the  first,  or  in  any  other  age  of  the 
world  ^s  history.  It  was  a  life.  It  was  He  who 
said,  ''I  am  the  life.'^  The  world  has  had  many 
great  teachers,  but  who  goes  to  a  life  of  self-denial 
along  a  path  so  hot  as  to  blister  their  feet  because 


THE  PASSION  OF  THE  CHUECH     115 

of  these  teachings  ?  What  was  it  that  sent  Father 
Damien  to  the  leper,  Paton  to  the  South  Sea 
Islands,  Morrison  to  China,  Livingstone  to  Africa, 
Grenfell  to  Labrador?  Nothing  but  a  personal 
love  for  a  personal  Saviour.  May  we  always  re- 
member that  we  must  give  ourselves  to  the  needy 
and  to  the  oppressed.  A  Unitarian  has  written, 
**  There  is  more  danger  that  the  source  of  per- 
sonal piety  will  dry  up  than  that  children  will 
starve  or  go  naked. ' ' 

There  is  deep  wisdom  in  the  words  of  Paterson 
Smith  in  his  "People's  Life  of  Christ":  **Men  are 
teaching  laws  of  economics  and  principles  of 
utilitarianism  and  ethical  persuasions  on  the  duty 
of  doing  good,  but  they  are  leaving  out  Christ; 
and  they  are  not  succeeding  and  they  know  it. 
Our  political  and  industrial  and  social  leaders  feel 
their  impotence,  their  lack  of  some  great  spiritual 
impulse  to  make  their  projects  work.  It  is  re- 
ligion that  is  needed.  It  is  not  enough  to  tell  us 
to  do  right.  We  want  a  pressing  motive  and  a 
power," 

There  is  only  one  challenge  I  wish  to  give — *  *  Is 
thy  heart  as  my  heart?  If  it  be,  give  me  thy 
hand."  There  is  room  for  almost  infinite  differ- 
ences of  opinion  but  there  can  never  be  any  dif- 
ference in  the  matter  of  a  whole-hearted  devotion 
to  the  Kingdom  of  God.  The  dying  Scott  said  to 
Lockhart,  his  son-in-law,  *  *  Give  yourself  royally. ' ' 
Paul,  speaking  of  Jesus  Christ,  says  in  a  verse 


116  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

that  is  matchless  and  stupendous,  "Christ  gave 
himself."    Dying  millionaires  have  given  away 
their  millions  only  when  Death,  the  grim  archer, 
had  sent  his  arrow  to  their  hearts  and  the  rigors 
of  death  had  loosed  their  grasp  upon  their  treas- 
ure.   But  Jesus  spent  His  life  in  giving  himself. 
If,  after  having  spent  a  life  in  ease  and  self- 
indulgence,  in  toying  with  our  tasks  and  in  shirk- 
ing all  we  could,  we  should  come  up  to  the  heavenly 
gate,  over  which  is  written,  ''These  are  they  who 
came  out  of  great  tribulation,"  would  we  have  the 
effrontery  to  pass  in?   Would  we  not  ask  for  some 
lesser  gate  where  we  might  hide  our  selfish  and 
diminished  head?    But  Heaven  has  no  such  gate. 
Its  twelve  gates  are  all  alike,  one  motto  is  over 
them  and   one  word  is  the  password  at   each. 
When  a  rich  man  died  a  neighbor  asked,  "How 
much  did  he  leave,"  and  the  village  wag  replied, 
"He  left  every  cent."    All  you  can  hold  in  your 
cold  dead  hand  is  what  you  have  given  away! 
Well  says  Bishop  Quayle,  '  *  The  angel  at  the  gate 
of  life  will  make  inquiry  of  every  comer,  '  Did  you 
spend  all  your  estate?'  "    When  Ian  MacLaren's 
"Doctor  of  the  Old  School"  was  dying,  he  faintly 
murmured,  "I  am  tired  to  death!"    He  had  used 
up  every  ounce  of  his  strength  and  ability  to  help 
those  to  whom  he  ministered  as  a  good  physician. 
There  is  Whitefield  utiUzing  the  last  bit  of  his 
strength,  stopping  on  the  stairs  on  the  way  to  his 
chamber  to  preach  a  last  message  to  the  crowd  at 


THE  PASSION  OF  THE  CHURCH     117 

Newburyport,  and  then  going'  upstairs  to  die. 
There  is  Wesley,  riding  more  miles  for  the  Master 
than  any  man  who  ever  bestrode  a  beast,  giving 
all  he  had  of  money  and  energy  and  time,  and  at 
the  last  leaving,  as  his  biographer  says,  *'a 
good  library,  a  well-worn  clergyman's  gown,  a 
much  abused  reputation  and  so — the  Methodist 
Church."  Paul  used  that  gigantic  word  of  his 
Lord,  ''He  emptied  Himself"  to  the  last  drop  of 
His  blood,  and  as  for  Paul  himself,  hear  his  own 
modest  epitome  of  his  service — ' '  In  stripes  above 
measure,  in  prisons  more  frequent,  in  deaths  oft. 
Of  the  Jews  five  times  received  I  forty  stripes 
save  one.  Thrice  was  I  beaten  with  rods,  once 
was  I  stoned,  thrice  I  suffered  shipwreck,  a  night 
and  a  day  I  have  been  in  the  deep.  In  journeyings 
often,  in  perils  of  waters,  in  perils  of  robbers,  in 
perils  by  mine  own  countrymen,  in  perils  by  the 
heathen,  in  perils  in  the  city,  in  perils  in  the 
wilderness,  in  perils  in  the  sea,  in  perils  among 
false  brethren,  in  weariness  and  painfulness,  in 
watchings  often,  in  hunger  and  thirst,  in  fastings 
often,  in  cold  and  nakedness." 

Let  us  put  that  up  against  the  spirit  of  our  own 
devotion  that  it  may  be  a  challenge  that  shall 
nerve  us  in  times  when  the  fire  bums  low  and  the 
path  of  dalliance  seems  to  be  strewn  with  flowers. 

"Which  shall  we  choose  to  be,  an  Ananias  or  a 
Paul, — an  Ananias  keeping  back  part  of  the  price 
and  dying  of  shame,  or  to  empty  ourselves  for  aD 


118  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

time  and  be  filled  of  God*s  grace  for  all  eternity? 
The  apostle  says,  ''What  things  were  gain  I 
counted  lost  for  Christ."  He  takes  no  credit  to 
himself,  but  he  says,  **  Though  I  preached  the 
gospel  I  have  nothing  to  glory  of,  for  necessity 
is  laid  upon  me.  Yea,  woe  is  unto  me  if  I  preach 
not  the  gospel. '  *  Having  seen  the  vision,  he  must 
be  true  to  it,  and  the  one  thing  that  glorified  his 
life  down  to  j;he  time  when  he  said,  * 'I  have  fought 
a  good  fight,  I  have  finished  my  course,  I  have 
kept  the  faith,"  was  the  blessed  fact  that  he  **was 
not  disobedient  unto  the  heavenly  vision."  Do 
we  not  need  to  have  something  of  his  burden? 
We  are  not  to  misunderstand  this.  We  shall  know 
something  of  what  he  said,  that  though  he  was 
cast  down,  he  was  not  forsaken;  though  he  was 
poor,  he  was  making  many  rich;  though  he  was 
in  tears,  yet  was  he  also  in  bounding  joy.  The 
very  measure  of  his  anxiety  and  longing  became, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  measure  of  his  delight  and 
victory  when  the  desire  of  his  heart  was  accom- 
plished. So  we  would  hear  him  saying,  **I  have 
great  heaviness  and  continual  sorrow  in  my  heart, 
for  I  could  wish  that  myself  were  accursed  from 
Christ  for  my  brethren,  my  kinsmen  according  to 
the  flesh."  It  is  the  same  spirit  which  a  father 
knows  when  he  would  rather  have  lost  his  life 
than  that  his  own  son  should  be  killed,  the  same 
spirit  which  a  mother  feels  when  she  will  gladly 
wear  herself  out  for  the  sake  of  her  child,  and  will 


THE  PASSION  OF  THE  CHURCH     119 

not  leave  him  even  at  the  prison  door  or  the 
scaffold's  step.  It  is  for  this  spirit  that  we  yearn. 
When  the  world  sees  it,  it  wiU  be  no  longer  faith- 
less but  believing. 


Chapter  X 
THE  PASSION  FOR  SERVICE 


CHAPTER  X 

THE  PASSION  FOR  SERVICE 

It  goes  without  saying  that  whosoever  will  fol- 
low his  Master  must  live  a  life  of  service.  "I  am 
among  you  as  he  that  serveth,"  said  the  Master, 
and  washing  His  disciples'  feet,  He  set  the  pace 
for  helpful,  gracious  ministries  of  every  sort. 
AVhat  we  need  is  a  vast  number  of  charter  mem- 
bers for  the  Society  of  the  Towel  and  the  Basin. 
When  an  imperious  mother  asked  of  Jesus  that 
one  of  her  sons  should  be  on  His  right  hand  and 
the  other  on  His  left  in  His  Kingdom,  she  was 
speaking  from  the  standpoint  of  the  same  selfish- 
ness and  greed  which  we  are  facing  today.  We 
find  men  who  want  preeminence  even  in  the  min- 
istry. There  are  plenty  of  us  who  would  like  to  be 
major  prophets,  but  who  among  us  wants  to  be 
classed  as  a  minor  prophet?  Who  envies  the  man 
who  is  known  as  James,  the  less?  It  was  very 
significant  that  when  some  time  ago,  reporters 
asked  men  in  the  streets  of  New  York  who  was  the 
greatest  man  in  America,  different  men  were 
named  because  a  different  valuation  was  placed 
upon  the  effect  of  their  lives,  but  the  basis  on 
which  each  of  them  was  named  was  not  of  position, 

123 


124  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

of  office,  of  power,  or  of  money,  but  only  on  the 
basis  of  service.  Whatever  difference  there  might 
be  in  the  estimate  of  their  achievements,  there 
was  no  difference  as  to  the  cause  of  true  greatness. 
It  has  always  been  so — the  history  of  the  world 
shows  plainly  that  it  has  counted  as  its  greatest 
men  those  who  have  most  truly  served.  Every 
institution  and  every  organization  is  measured  by 
its  service  to  mankind.  When  a  nation  proves 
itself  unfitted  for  a  task,  it  must  pass  away,  and 
the  same  thing  is  true  of  the  Church.  What  a 
fulfilment  of  this  declaration  we  have  seen  in  the 
last  few  years ! 

"Lord,  where  are  kings  and  empires  now 
Of  old  that  went  and  came?" 

He  hath  put  down  the  mighty  from  their  seats  and 
exalted  those  of  low  degree.  We  have  seen  many 
of  the  thrones  of  Europe  emptied,  discarded 
crowns  by  the  dozen  have  fallen  into  the  scrap 
heap.  Why  all  this?  Because  they  were  useless, 
because  God  said,  ''I  am  tired  of  kings — I  suffer 
them  no  more."  There  is  no  more  any  divine 
right  of  kings.  The  motto  of  the  Prince  of  Wales 
— "I  serve" — is  the  only  motto  fit  to  be  engraved 
over  any  throne. 

After  traveling  through  the  country  and  being 
in  touch  with  schools  and  colleges,  as  well  as  with 
the  men  of  the  street,  after  reading  modern 
literature  in  the  magazines  and  weekly  papers, 
one  is  impressed  with  the  fact  that  there  is  a  sort 


THE  PASSION  FOR  SERVICE        125 

of  materialistic  epicureanism  which  is  seeking  to 
make  its  way  in  high  places.  There  is  a  drying  up 
of  the  great  source  of  life,  of  the  old  sense  of  the 
outreach  of  humanity,  of  destiny  outlasting  the 
stars,  and  a  high  calUng  that  is  not  ended  with 
dollars  and  position.  As  a  recent  writer  in  one 
of  our  leading  magazines  has  said,  '*  Robbed  of 
eternity,  we  mean  to  make  time  pay  to  the  utmost. 
Hence  this  nervous,  feverish  activity.  Our  anx- 
iety is  an  unconfessed  manifestation  of  our  im- 
mense sense  of  loss.  We  have  but  a  few  minutes 
in  which  to  rob  the  house  of  life,  let  us  seize  all 
the  articles  in  sight.  Death,  the  householder,  is 
even  now  waiting  to  take  us  into  custody.'^  As 
we  look  back  at  our  old  Puritan  ancestors,  we  pity 
them  for  their  narrow  quarters,  and  all  the  hard- 
ships which  they  must  have  endured  from  lack  of 
the  conveniences  which  have  become  necessities 
to  us.  We  live  so  much  more  comfortably  and 
easily.  In  the  dread  winters  which  they  passed, 
they  must  fell  the  trees  and  chop  the  wood  and 
throw  it  into  the  great  fireplace  where  most  of 
the  heat  disappeared  up  the  chimney.  To  light 
their  homes,  they  had  the  tallow  dips,  which  they 
prepared  with  much  labor.  Now  if  we  want  heat 
or  light,  we  press  a  button.  Conveniences  of 
every  kind  await  our  nod.  Handicapped  as  our 
fathers  were,  we  often  wonder  was  their  life  worth 
living.  But  as  a  matter  of  fact,  they  seem  to  have 
been  rather  happier  than  we  are.     The  wilful 


126  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

poverty  of  our  spiritual  lives  must  vastly  impress 
us  as  we  contrast  that  with  the  holy  joy  which  is 
reflected  in  the  story  of  their  lives,  which  they 
have  handed  down  to  us. 

At  a  recent  church  convention,  the  question 
arose  on  what  issue  to  put  special  emphasis. 
Some  thought  it  should  be  on  social  regeneration, 
some  that  it  should  be  on  legal  enactments  to 
outlaw  sin,  and  others  that  it  should  be  the  appli- 
cation of  religion  to  business,  but  it  was  finally 
decided  that  the  crying  need  of  the  hour  was  first 
to  get  some  religion  that  could  be  applied,  to  have 
some  ideals  that  were  good  enough  to  regenerate 
the  world  when  they  were  applied. 

A  recent  article  in  one  of  our  leading  magazines 
makes  bold  to  say  that  the  destiny  of  man  was 
once  talked  of  as  a  spiritual  mystery,  connoting 
endless  endeavor  and  opportunity.  Terror  and 
splendor  attended  the  Word.  Now  the  highest 
dream  of  high  destiny  is  a  porcelain  bathtub,  or 
some  safe  shelter  behind  a  wire  screen  where  we 
shall  be  impervious  to  the  attack  of  germs.  We 
have  need  of  a  profounder  faith,  a  more  poignant 
fear  than  this  age  knows. 

One  of  our  New  York  papers  asked  this  ques- 
tion, ''What  is  the  matter  with  our  mode  of  life?'* 
and  these  were  the  answers  given  by  the  men 
whom  the  reporters  stopped  on  Broadway:  "We 
are  drifting  away  from  the  faith  of  our  fore- 
fathers.   There  are  65,000,000  heathen  in  Amer- 


THE  PASSION  FOE  SERVICE        127 

ica.  That  alone  answers  the  question. '  ^  Another 
said,  ''People  are  fighting  for  the  material  things 
of  this  world,  instead  of  the  spiritual. ' '  And  the 
next  man  said,  ''We  are  drifting  away,  from  the 
teachings  of  our  Lord  and  Saviour,  Jesus  Christ. 
We  need  to  be  transformed  instead  of  reformed. 
We  are  in  the  grip  of  a  materialistic  philosophy." 
I  think  we  are  all  agreed  that  the  need  of  the 
hour  is  the  restatement  of  the  great  verities  which 
always  have  been  and  always  will  be  supreme  in 
the  lives  of  men.  We  want  the  same  upholding 
strength  which  the  patriarchs  knew  and  by  virtue 
of  which  they  went  out  to  a  land  which  they  knew 
not,  because  they  heard  the  call  of  God.  We  never 
needed  more  than  we  need  now  the  consolations 
which  uplift  the  soul  in  the  midst  of  catastrophe 
and  loss.  They  tell  us  that  our  churches  are 
empty,  but  our  asylums  and  our  morgues  are  fuU. 
There  is  nothing  that  will  so  steady  men  in  the 
midst  of  strain  and  calamity  to  play  the  game,  to 
fight  the  good  fight  to  the  end,  as  to  realize  the 
besetting  and  forefending  God.  If  we  have  lost 
our  faith,  our  hope  in  immortality,  how  did  we 
lose  it?  Must  we  not  go  back  to  the  place  where 
we  had  it  last  and  see  if  we  cannot  find  it?  "If 
we  have  been  robbed  of  incalculable  hopes  and 
aspirations,  who  robbed  us?  Do  we  not  owe  it 
to  ourselves  and  to  our  children  to  bring  the 
robbers  to  trial  and  to  take  from  them  that  which 


128  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

they  have  filched  from  us,  making  us  and  our 
children  hankrupt  indeed?" 

One  of  our  liberal  papers  some  time  ago  had 
two  editorials,  the  heading  of  which  seemed  like 
an  affront  to  our  whole  Christian  life.  The  first 
question  asked  was,  ' '  Can  democracy  tolerate  the 
Church?"  At  first  one  was  inclined  to  be  indig- 
nant at  the  iconoclast  who  could  even  frame  such 
a  question,  but  it  all  resolves  itself  into  a  question 
of  fact.  If  the  church  is  the  friend  of  the  people, 
if  the  church  is  helpful  in  those  things  which  are 
lovely  and  of  good  report,  if  the  principles  which 
it  advocates  make  life  safer,  property  more  se- 
cure, and  conserve  the  highest  interest  of  society, 
there  can  be  no  question  but  that  democracy  must 
be  the  greatest  ally  which  the  church  has,  and 
the  church  the  greatest  organization  to  consum- 
mate a  true  democracy.  The  other  question  was, 
"Can  Christianity  tolerate  the  church?"  The 
answer  to  that  must  lie  in  the  question,  "What 
is  the  church  in  its  essential  spirit  and  what  is  it 
seeking  to  become?"  Christianity  cannot  tolerate 
the  church  unless  the  church  is  Christian,  that  is 
unless  it  has  the  principles  of  Christ  in  its  life, 
unless  it  puts  the  first  things  first  and  enthrones 
spiritual  values  above  all  others  and  gives  itself 
uncalculatingly  and  unstintingly  to  those  things 
to  which  the  Master  gave  Himself.  It  must  cease 
to  discriminate  between  the  rich  and  the  poor,  or 
even  between  the  ignorant  and  the  learned,  or 


THE  PASSION  FOR  SERVICE        129 

between  those  socially  at  the  top  or  socially  at  the 
bottom.  Jesus  was  no  respecter  of  persons.  He 
has  one  gospel  for  the  Pharisee  and  the  Publican 
— one  gospel  for  Dives  and  for  Lazarus. 

Customs  hoary  with  age  have  passed  away  be- 
cause they  were  useless,  because  they  did  not 
benefit  mankind.  Once  slavery  flourished  in  every 
land.  That  was  service  under  compulsion.  It  was 
right  dominated  by  might,  and  God  said, '  *  It  must 
go."  The  same  is  true  of  organization  and 
methods  of  business  and  everything  else  that  does 
not  serve  humanity.  Their  doom  is  written  in  the 
nature  of  things.  Customs  which  curse  and  not 
bless  cannot  long  survive,  for  they  bear  their 
doom  in  their  own  deeds. 

We  invite  to  our  clubs  and  to  our  secret  socie- 
ties men  who  occupy  a  similar  social  plane,  or  who 
are  congenial,  or  men  of  common  tastes.  If  we 
want  to  make  a  club  of  the  church,  we  can  do  the 
same  thing  there,  but  such  a  church  will  go  down 
to  ruin.  A  church  must  serve  all  classes  and  con- 
ditions of  men,  and  he  who  has  caught  the  spirit 
of  his  Master  will  go  with  a  bounding  love  and 
a  heart  on  fire  to  give  service  to  those  who  need  it 
most.  It  needs  to  be  everywhere  proclaimed  that 
while  the  first  duty  of  a  man  is  to  get  his  own 
soul  right  with  God,  he  cannot  grow  in  grace  or 
even  preserve  his  own  sense  of  acceptance  with 
God  unless  he  throws  himself  with  absolute  aban- 


130  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

don  into  the  same  work  for  which  his  Master  lived 
and  died. 

"God  does  with  us  as  we  with  torches  do 
Not  light  them  for  themselves; 
For  if  our  virtues  go  not  forth  of  us 
'Twere  all  the  same  as  if  we  had  them  not." 

The  church  need  have  no  fear  of  anarchy  or  so- 
cialism or  sabotage  or  skepticism  of  any  sort,  if 
it  will  give  itself  to  service. 

But  it  is  not  enough,  as  we  have  said,  to  care 
for  the  lesser  needs  of  our  human  life.  '*  A  man's 
life  consisteth  not  in  the  abundance  of  the  things 
which  he  possesses."  "We  are  to  lead  men  to  a 
larger  life.  Here  is  our  greatest  service.  We 
must  seek  for  better  conditions  for  men,  but  we 
must  realize  that  first  and  last  and  all  the  time 
our  object  is  to  make  better  men. 

I  know  scores  of  fathers  and  mothers  who  are 
in  anguish  not  because  their  sons  are  not  well 
paid,  not  because  they  do  not  live  in  good  houses 
and  under  the  best  of  sanitary  conditions,  but 
their  hearts  are  breaking  because  their  children 
are  reaping  the  wages  of  unrighteousness,  be- 
cause in  the  midst  of  all  their  plenty  they  have 
turned  from  God  to  serve  the  world,  the  flesh  and 
the  devil.  No  one  can  read  the  daily  papers  with- 
out staggering  under  the  fact  that  men  of  social 
prominence  and  many  of  our  leaders,  both  among 
workers  and  capitalists,  are  men  of  ungodly  lives 
who  use  the  advantages  of  better  conditions  of 


THE  PASSION  FOR  SERVICE        131 

labor  and  better  returns  of  capital  to  weigh  their 
souls  down  to  hell  with  the  additional  temptations 
which  these  successes  have  given  them. 

The  church  is  to  be  the  regenerator  of  the  world 
— to  throw  itself  into  the  breach,  and  since  it 
stands  supremely  for  spiritual  things,  it  is  to  put 
these  things  at  the  very  front.  How  can  a  pastor 
sleep  nights  or  enjoy  the  comforts  of  life  until  he 
is  conscious  that  he  is  doing  the  utmost  within  his 
power  to  put  life  under  the  ribs  of  this  death? 
How  can  any  member  of  the  church  go  to  his  place 
of  worship,  receive  the  holy  sacrament,  which 
marks  afresh  the  sacrifice  of  his  Lord  and  recalls 
his  own  holy  promise  to  be  true  to  Him,  without 
realizing  that  by  daylight  and  by  dark  he  must 
sound  forth  the  call  of  his  Master  by  his  lips  and 
by  his  life?  When  the  passion  of  such  a  service 
shall  possess  the  heart  of  the  church,  the  world 
will  throw  off  its  indifference  and  the  church  will 
come  to  its  own  by  the  preeminence  of  its  life  and 
the  power  of  its  sacrifice. 


Chapter  XI 
HOW  TO  NOURISH  THE  SACRED  FIRE 


CHAPTER  XI 

HOW   TO   NOURISH   THE   SACRED   FIRE 

''Follow  me,''  said  Jesus,  "and  I  will  make  you 
fishers  of  men."  A  man  cannot  become  such  of 
his  own  self.  He  is  not  equal  to  a  task  so  super- 
nal. As  we  have  been  saying  all  along,  nothing 
but  the  touch  of  the  Master's  passion  can  create 
or  conserve  the  soul's  spiritual  life. 

Boreham  remarks  on  the  transformation  which 
took  place  in  the  life  of  Thomas  Chalmers.  He 
was  the  brilliant  pastor  of  a  little  church  in 
Kilmany,  a  marvelous  preacher  when  he  was  only 
twenty-three.  He  was  a  good  pastor  and  won 
their  unstinted  admiration  and  love.  But  they 
could  not  understand  why  when  they  came  to  the 
kirk  on  the  Sabbath  day  he  fulminated  at  that 
little  company  against  the  heinous  wickedness  of 
theft,  of  murder,  and  of  adultery.  After  they  had 
spent  a  hard  week's  work  in  field  and  stable,  why 
should  they  be  berated  by  their  minister  as  if  they 
had  spent  the  week  in  open  shame?  "This,"  says 
Chalmers'  biographer,  "continued  from  1803  to 
1811,  but  then  something  happened.  Chalmers 
ceased  to  thunder  against  the  grosser  crimes  and 
against  the  iniquities  of  Napoleon,  but  every  day 

135 


136  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

he  had  something  fresh  to  say  about  the  love  of 
God,  about  the  cross  of  Christ,  and  about  the  way 
of  salvation.'^  ''He  would  bend  over  the  pulpit 
and  press  us  to  take  the  gift,"  says  one  of  his 
hearers,  "as  if  he  had  it  that  moment  in  his  hand 
and  would  not  be  satisfied  until  every  one  of  us 
had  got  possession  of  it.  And  then  when  the  ser- 
mon was  over  and  he  rose  to  pronounce  the  bene- 
diction, he  would  break  out  afresh  with  some  new 
entreaty,  unwilling  to  let  us  go  until  he  had  made 
one  more  effort  to  persuade  us  to  accept  it." 

He  says  that  in  1811  he  was  converted.  When 
he  was  called  away  to  a  great  city  parish  this  was 
what  he  said  to  his  humble  parishioners :  "For  the 
first  eight  years  of  my  twelve  with  you,  I  thun- 
dered away  against  crimes  of  every  sort,  but  the 
interesting  fact  is  that  during  the  whole  of  that 
period  I  never  once  heard  of  any  reformation 
being  wrought  among  you.  It  was  not  until  the 
free  offer  of  forgiveness  through  the  blood  of 
Christ  was  urged  upon  you  that  I  ever  heard  of 
those  subordinate  reformations  which  I  made  the 
ultimate  object  of  my  earlier  ministry.  You  have 
taught  me  that  to  preach  Jesus  Christ  is  the  only 
effective  way  of  preaching  morality,  and  the  les- 
son which  I  have  learned  in  your  humble  cot- 
tages, I  shall  carry  into  a  wider  field." 

Bunyan  said  the  same  thing  long  before  the 
days  of  Chalmers.  He  says : "  I  went  for  the  space 
of  two  years  crying  out  against  men's  sins  and 


HOW  TO  NOURISH  SACRED  FIRE    137 

their  fearful  state  because  of  them.  After  which, 
the  Lord  came  in  upon  my  own  soul  with  peace 
and  comfort  through  Christ.  He  gave  me  many 
sweet  discoveries  of  blessed  grace  through  Him. 
Wherefore  now  I  altered  in  my  preaching  and  did 
much  labor  to  hold  forth  Christ  in  all  His  offices, 
relations  and  benefits  unto  the  world.  After  this 
God  led  me  into  something  of  the  mystery  of  the 
union  with  Christ.  Wherefore  that  I  discovered 
and  showed  it  to  them  also."  Ah,  if  we  could 
only  measure  to  the  heights  of  that  personal  ex- 
perience of  which  it  is  written  "What  we  have 
seen  and  felt  with  confidence  we  tell." 

Theories  may  be  cold,  but  reality  is  full  of  pas- 
sion. When  one  has  an  experience  of  his  own, 
then  he  hastens  to  bring  others  into  the  same 
blessed  knowledge,  and  when  once  others  are 
brought  in  his  own  confidence  is  thereby  multi- 
plied. What  a  miracle  of  grace  to  be  able  to  win 
a  soul  to  God  and  what  infinite  comfort  to  the 
soul  who  wins  another!  Nothing  can  take  the 
place  of  it.  Mr.  Valiant-for-Truth  cries  out,  when 
the  summons  to  go  hence  seized  him, ' '  My  sword  I 
give  to  him  who  shall  succeed  me  in  my  pilgrim- 
age; my  courage  and  skill  to  him  who  can  get 
them ;  my  marks  and  scars  I  carry  with  me  to  be 
my  witness  that  I  have  fought  His  battles  who 
will  now  be  my  rewarder."  When  a  man  has 
victories  hung  up  in  the  high  halls  of  memory, 
how  his  faith  increases!    He  won  them  himself 


138  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

at  the  point  of  a  Damascus  blade,  which  is  the 
word  of  God,  and  he  is  fain  to  say  with  David, 
*  *  There  is  none  like  it ;  give  it  to  me. '  ^ 

It  is  a  sad  thing  in  the  life  of  the  individual 
when  the  child  spirit  dies ;  when  he  ceases  to  won- 
der and  adore.  How  supremely  true  it  is  in  the 
life  of  him  who  proclaims  the  message  that  he 
will  lose  its  power  when  the  wonder  and  marvel 
of  it  fades  out  of  his  soul!  A  man  need  have  no 
troubles  over  the  miracles  of  the  first  century, 
when  he  sees  them  reproduced  in  his  own  life  at 
the  touch  of  the  pierced  Hand.  If  one  can  feel  the 
compelling  glow  of  those  adoring  words, 

"When  I  survey  the  wondrous  cross 
On  which  the  Prince  of  glory  died 
My  richest  gain  I  count  but  loss 
And  pour  contempt  on  all  my  pride." 

he  will  be  able  to  say 

"Jesus,  I  love  thee,  thou  art  to  me 
Dearer  than  ever  mortal  can  be." 

As  well  think  of  restraining  the  ardor  of  the 
bridegroom  as  to  lay  restraining  hands  upon  his 
devotion.  His  love  is  as  fire  shut  up  in  his  bones. 
That  will  transform  the  pulpit  and  kindle  a  blaze 
which  will  draw  men  from  every  walk  in  life  to  see 
it  burn. 

We  must  make  more  personal  the  message 
which  we  bring  to  men.  Dr.  Jefferson  will  not  be 
accused  of  failing  to  emphasize  the  social  note  or 
of  being  unduly  moved  by  his  emotions,  but  in  his 


HOW  TO  NOURISH  SACRED  FIRE    139 

Yale  Lectures,  he  says, ' '  Many  a  man  is  preaching 
to  a  dwindling  congregation  because  his  sermons 
have  lost  the  personal  note.  He  chills  by  his 
vague  generalities,  or  enrages  by  his  wholesale 
denunciation.  This  is  not  the  age  in  which  the 
preacher  can  afford  to  lose  the  personal  touch. 
Many  forces  conspire  to  blur  the  edges  of  indi- 
viduality and  melt  men  into  a  common  mass. ' ' 
Even  organized  philanthropy  has  a  tendency  to 
lose  the  individual.  It  is  the  lack  of  this  personal 
touch  which  is  multipljdng  our  problems  and  deep- 
ening the  blackness  of  human  tragedy.  Thou- 
sands of  men  and  women  all  over  the  world  have 
lost  their  grip  upon  the  high  things  of  life  because 
no  one  but  God  feels  for  them.  There  is  no  one  on 
earth  who  cares  for  their  souls.  Men  are  lost  to 
the  church  as  soon  as  they  are  submerged  in  the 
crowd.  Dr.  Jefferson  adds,  ''In  fact,  the  preacher 
is  in  danger  of  losing  himself." 

It  is  a  matter  of  history  that  on  one  occasion 
when  Julia  Ward  Howe  invited  Charles  Sumner 
to  meet  a  distinguished  guest  at  her  house,  he 
replied,  "  I  do  not  know  that  I  wish  to  meet  your 
friend.  I  have  outlived  my  interest  in  individ- 
uals." Recording  in  her  diary  that  night  the 
Senator  ^s  surly  remark,  Mrs.  Howe  wrote  after 
it,  ''God  Almighty,  by  latest  accounts,  had  not  got 
so  far  as  this." 

The  great  secret  of  power  is  the  personal  touch. 
God  Himself  put  on  a  soul  and  a  body  when  He 


140  HERALDS  OF  A  PASSION 

came  to  ns.  They  were  arms  of  flesh  and  blood, 
like  ours,  which  stretched  wide  upon  the  cross, 
and  which  when  taken  down  and  folded  over  the 
lifeless  bosom  invisibly  folded  a  saved  world  in 
their  embrace. 

"What  a  beautiful  testimonial  that  was  to  the 
matchless  personality  of  Henry  Drummond,  that 
when  an  artisan  was  dying,  his  wife  knocked  at 
Drummond 's  door  and  said,  ''My  husband  is 
deeing',  sir.  He's  no'  able  to  speak  to  you,  and 
he's  no'  able  to  hear  you,  and  I  dinna  ken  as  he 
can  see  you ;  but  I  would  like  him  to  hae  a  breath 
o'  you  aboot  him  afore  he  dees."  No  books  can 
ever  nourish  a  believing  heart  as  will  the  goodness 
and  patience  and  truth  which  is  reflected  in  in- 
dividual lives. 

Here  then  is  the  conclusion  of  the  whole  matter. 
Jesus  said,  "I  am  come  that  ye  might  have  life 
and  that  ye  might  have  it  more  abundantly. ' '  By 
vital  contact  with  Him  who  is  the  way,  the  truth, 
and  the  life,  we  must  keep  our  souls  alive.  The 
inner  light  must  not  fail ;  our  passion  for  the  souls 
of  men  must  never  cease.  But  if,  alas,  our  passion 
for  the  souls  of  men  has  in  any  sense  failed,  we 
must  get  it  back.  We  must  have  our  trysting 
place  with  God  and  meeting  Him  there.  He  who 
heareth  in  secret  will  reward  us  openly,  and  we 
shall  have  power  with  men.  However  great  our 
natural  abilities,  they  are  only  the  channels 
through  which  the  tides  of  holy  passion  and  power 


HOW  TO  NOURISH  SACRED  FIRE    141 

must  run.  Let  us  not  mistake  the  channel  for  the 
power,  and  let  us  be  careful  that  no  act  of  ours 
shall  sever  our  connection  with  the  source  of 
power.  The  secret  of  the  Lord  is  with  those  who 
fear  Him.  In  fellowship  with  Him  we  shall  catch 
His  love — a  love  which  stopped  not  at  the  cross. 
We  cannot  do  better  than  to  utter  the  prayer  of 
the  old  hymn  which  for  generations  has  aroused 
the  church  to  a  waiting  pentecost. 

"Oh,  that  it  now  from  heaven  might  fall, 
And  all  our  sins  consmue, 
Come,  Holy  Ghost,  for  thee  I  call. 
Spirit  of  burning  come. 

"Refining  fire,  go  through  my  heart, 
Illuminate  my  soul. 
Scatter  thy  life  through  every  part, 
And  sanctify  the  whole." 

The  Master's  call  is  upon  us.  It  is  hot  with 
haste.    Rise  up ;  let  us  go ! 


THE  END 


P7 


<J  7' 


Pjlinceton  Theoloqjcal  Seminary  Libraries 


1    1012  01245  4635 


